


An Evening at the Opera, and eventually, Other Things

by CynicInAFishbowl



Series: Politics and Profanity [2]
Category: Pride and Prejudice & Related Fandoms, Pride and Prejudice (1995), Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: All aboard the Hot Mess Express, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Australian characters, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, EXPECT BETRAYAL, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, F/M, HELLO CITRUS, Slow Burn, So now I'm writing side-fics, also some surprise blasphemy, and the commensurate levels of swearing, heaven help me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2018-09-26 16:00:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 56,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9910310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynicInAFishbowl/pseuds/CynicInAFishbowl
Summary: What started off as a series of little asides from my fic, Politics and Profanity, centering around Mary and Colonel Fitzwilliam, fitting in between the chapters, as described in the notes.What is fast becoming a fully-fledged fic in its own right, about which I have more feels than the main fic.NOW FEATURING SOME ZESTY CITRUS





	1. An Evening at the Opera

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An evening at the opera, with Fitzwilliam playing the role of 'strapping young lad who is unlikely to complain', and Mary the role of 'unimpressed spinster'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place between chapters 6 and 7 of my fic 'Politics and Profanity', wherein Elizabeth is no longer able to accompany Mary to the opera, and so calls in Fitzwilliam to replace her. My apologies to all of the readers who were shipping some Lizzie/Fitzminor, but I had this planned LONG before I ever saw Elizabeth/Fitzwilliam as a potential ship. Hopefully you'll see this as an acceptable alternative.  
> The main fic can be found here, http://archiveofourown.org/works/9367256/chapters/21205592  
> I'd recommend giving it a read because I've built up a slightly questionable alternate universe, and it'll help if you understand the lay of the political land. Also, because you'll get to meet Lord Tristan, who is an absolute hoot.

Mary Bennet wasn’t generally concerned by the shouting of hideously imaginative profanities on the occasions where she visited her sister Elizabeth at work. In a department run by Mr Edward Gardiner, hideously imaginative profanities were more or less par for the course. It was only when the phrase ‘lubricated horse cock’ was shouted at the zenith of some rant about purview and (confusingly) regency novels that she admitted to herself that this may have been more than the usual posturing.

And admittedly it was. The decidedly messy implosion of UKIP had been a fracas waiting to happen ever since Her Teutonic Glory had shoved Article 50 up the collective backsides of the British public with, to not put too fine a point on it, a lubricated horse cock, prompting the secession of the north (with the Republic of Ireland already using the Euro, it wasn’t hard for Northern Ireland and Scotland to follow their lead out of the United Kingdom and into the European Union).

Mary just objected to the timing. She had never thought it would be hard to find someone to take a free ticket to the opera. She had started by asking the two other female PhD candidates she knew from her undergraduate studies, and with whom she occasionally went to the symphony. One had a birthday party she couldn’t get out of, and another was going to be in Wales for the weekend for some undisclosed reason. She then asked the guy she’d been attending metal concerts with for the past five years, going with the logic of ‘technically this is a concert, and concert buddy is your domain’. He had had work. Her musician friends were all unable to extricate themselves from prior engagements. Elizabeth, while a risky bet, was still more likely to be available than Jane.

She did, however, have to admit that she was impressed when Elizabeth was able to rustle up a replacement within the space of five minutes. It was a sad waste of Elizabeth’s outfit, which looked excellent, and was exactly the kind of outfit which Mary sorely wished she could pull off. Alas, in Mary’s case, the lottery of genetics had not resolved in her favour. While pretty enough, she was, for lack of a better descriptor, a bit butch. Her four sisters (even Lydia, the ‘family athlete’) were built along rather dainty lines. Not so Mary. At 5’5, she was taller than all of them except Lydia (and even then, Lydia only had an inch and a half on her, and at least some of that was hair), and she was built along the lines of a sturdy Siberian potato farmer whose bloodline was strong enough to survive the winter.

That was not to say that by the age of 26 she hadn’t learned how to work within the confines of her physique. Moderately sporty, she had the dubious honour of being the only woman in the history of the UCL Engineering Rugby competition to be on one of the teams (the few women that existed played on the mixed touch-rugby teams), and the even more dubious honour of playing Hooker rather well. A childhood spent playing vicious sports like Lacrosse had made her rather tough, being relatively short, she had an excellently low centre of gravity, a penchant for powerlifting resulted in excellent leg muscles, and the fact that she was a girl meant that opponents tended to chicken out of tackling her at the last moment.

She had learned to stop modelling her dress off of her sisters, instead gravitating towards skinny jeans which showed off her calf definition, and shirts with necklines that publicised the fact that she was in possession of breasts designed for socialising rather than sports. When it came to formalwear, that meant that she could, with careful application of shapewear and obscenely high heels, pull off trousers, but tended to go the more comfortable route of heavily structured and voluminous skirts. The sheer girth of the skirts (coupled with some creative corsetry to ensure the right waist-to-hip circumference ratio) rendered a look which could almost have passed for ‘dainty’, were it not coupled with her personality.

All in all, by the age of 26, Mary Bennet was reasonably pleased with how she had turned out. Nine years of engineering had remediated the effects of living in an almost all-female household and attending an all-girls school insofar as she had learned how to talk to guys (albeit the sort of gentlemen who studied engineering, but since those were the only gentlemen she ever encountered, she couldn’t really complain about her limitations), she was no longer the awkward goth youth she had been for a regrettably lengthy juncture, and she had some excellent accomplishments, even if her family didn’t entirely approve of, or indeed generally even recognise them.

That was to say, lengthy digression aside, that Mary was impressed at Elizabeth’s ability to rustle up a replacement until said replacement actually appeared. Because until Elizabeth’s replacement arrived, she had been confident of her ability to deal with said replacement. After all, she was promised a strapping young man who was unlikely to complain. She was not promised a dashingly handsome gentleman in his early thirties, excellently dressed, tall and rangy, and with hair which was attractively slightly mussed. That is, however, what was delivered. This was an eventuality for which Mary was not prepared.

Just because Mary was not forewarned, did not mean that she was not forearmed. Mary’s personality was naturally astringent, and so it was in no way difficult for her to grab at the easiest defence available to her when faced with an attractive man who was to escort her to the opera, and for whose company she was unprepared; that of spinsterish disapproval sprinkled with barely disguised hostility. Having spent almost a decade engaged in study and research where males outnumbered females by an order of about a dozen to one, Mary had learned that the easiest way to ensure that those males treated her with appropriate deference and didn’t try anything was to remind them of a terrifying matriarch who wasn’t entirely fond of them. With one exception, it had served her admirably.

When Elizabeth had introduced them, and entreated Mary to be civil (not likely, but Lizzie got points for trying), Mary realised that this could be another exception. Whereas most gentlemen would be at least slightly taken aback by a strapping youngish lady who apparently hated the very fibre of their being without ever before having met them, this one had responded to her menacing tone with a raised eyebrow and a slight smile. A slight smile which made him look considerably more handsome than any man should be allowed to look.

Elizabeth, who regrettably had _things to do_ for the _good of the government_ , chivvied them from her office, and with one last despairing look at Mary, left them facing each other in the corridor, Mary with her arms crossed and skirts pooled around her, and Fitzwilliam with his hands in his pockets looking at her with far too much intrigue and not at all enough mild terror. After a lengthy period of Mary glaring ineffectually in a final attempt to inspire awed horror, she sighed and checked her phone. “We should head across,” she commented. When Fitzwilliam agreed and they began to make their way outside, Mary continued, “We’re watching ‘La Traviata’. Are you familiar with it?”

“I’m not entirely familiar with Verdi’s operas. I’m more a fan of choral symphonies as a rule, although I’m not opposed to the less staging-reliant operas like Berlioz’ Damnation of Faust. I just find conventional operas a bit… contrived,” he said after a pause as he sought the correct word. “And they all seem to centre around either young women who are dying of consumption, philandering assholes, or both. Not to mention the fact that the only roles available to the lower voices are generally witches, bitches,”

At this point Mary interrupted him, finishing the statement, “britches, and statues.” This earned her a surprised smile from Fitzwilliam, who until that point had thought he was expressing what would constitute an unpopular opinion. “I completely agree. There’s far too much emphasis on the women being young and pretty and high pitched, and frankly, it’s all a bit appallingly sexist.” She regarded Fitzwilliam for a moment. “You’re awfully knowledgeable about the gender and voice politics of opera. How did that come about?”

“A friend of mine was an excellent soprano as a child. Then puberty hit, and almost overnight her range dropped to a light contralto, thus putting a stopper in her plans of studying classical singing at university. By eighteen she had the range of a tenor, but since that wasn’t really a viable career choice, she studied Law, and now she’s a DJ. Not that that’s relevant. I’ve just heard her ranting on the subject every time anyone mentions the word ‘opera’. If you’re not really a die-hard fan of opera, why did you queue overnight for tickets?” Fitzwilliam asked.

“Lizzie mentioned that?” Mary inquired, not having heard that point mentioned.

“I put some facts together and came to a conclusion,” he replied unspecifically.

Mary shrugged. “While I may not be a massive opera fan, I am very much in favour of anything which allows me to be massively overdressed and sit in a darkened room watching trained musicians.” Much to Mary’s disappointment with herself, she was finding it difficult to keep up the hostility when her conversational partner had the correct opinions on music.

Various conversational topics later, none of them able to provide a point of contention for Mary to sieze, they arrived at the Royal Opera House, at which point Mary was descended upon by the girls with whom she had queued overnight for tickets, who were all abuzz with the same question. Which was unsurprising, given the fact that Fitzwilliam had offered her his arm, and she saw no harm in taking it, given that her ‘terrifying spinsterish aunt’ impersonation wasn’t working.

“Who is this gentleman?” asked Claire, a recent Medical Science graduate whom Mary had met in the queue, and with whom she had, over the course of the night, become rather good friends. The question was asked with a not insignificant amount of eyebrow raising, once the niceties of hugs and comments on the fact that when they weren’t queueing overnight they actually scrubbed up rather well.

“A last minute ring-in. Lizzie had a work emergency. This is Mr Evelyn Fitzwilliam.”

“Major,” Fitzwilliam interjected.

“Pardon?” Mary asked.

“Major Evelyn Fitzwilliam.”

Mary had to suppress the involuntary frisson which ran through her. She had not thought herself one of the women who had heart palpitations the moment she was faced with a gentleman in uniform, but it appeared that that was merely due to the fact that she had not been exposed to members of the military profession. It appeared that she very much was one of those women. “Lizzie didn’t mention that,” Mary muttered once Claire walked off to say hi to one of the other girls from the queue.

“That’s because she introduced me and then had to disappear,” he pointed out.

Mary was about to reply when she caught sight of someone making their way towards her and immediately stiffened. She involuntarily ground out “For fuck’s sake,” and crossed her arms, prompting Fitzwilliam to look down at a woman whom he had previously thought was acting slightly hostile towards him, only to realise that either Mary Bennet was either a bottomless fount of hostility, or she just wasn’t trying with him. He wasn’t sure which was a more comforting prospect.

Fitzwilliam also couldn’t help but feel that he recognised the man who had engendered such a reaction in Mary. There was something familiar about the rower’s physique, artfully tousled hair, and smoking jacket and opera scarf combination.

“Excuse me a moment,” Mary said quietly, taking a couple of strides in the direction of the approaching man, leaving Fitzwilliam still within hearing distance, and very much intrigued.

“Bennet,” the man drawled, air kissing Mary before stepping back and giving her a very obvious and more than slightly predatory once-over. “You’re overdressed as usual.”

“Crawford,” Mary replied, her tone clipped, “you’re charming as ever. Where has your inevitably musically illiterate date gone?”

“I could ask the same of whichever sister of yours you’ve roped into accompanying you. I thought you hated opera.”

“I thought _you_ hated opera.”

He shrugged as a young woman in a bright pink cocktail dress and the sort of heels in which one could only mince materialised next to him and clung to his arm.

As introductions commenced, Fitzwilliam could see Mary beginning to drum her fingertips lightly against her arm, causing the fabric covering her upper arm to ripple slightly. She seemed to be looking for a polite out, and he had the means to provide one. Knowing that it was a bit of a risk, especially if he had misisnterpreted the situation (unlikely), he entered a role he had played once before for Caroline, that of the decoy boyfriend.

Striding towards Mary, he slid an arm around her waist, and when she turned to see who was insinuating himself around her person, he pressed a light kiss to her temple, and upon seeing Mary’s shocked expression, winked momentarily and said, “There you are, darling. Who’s this?”

Mary, with a hint of a smile, understood what he was playing at, and relaxed into him slightly. “Henry, this is Major Evelyn Fitzwilliam. Evelyn, this is Henry Crawford, an old university acquaintance.”

There followed some slightly strained small-talk until the ten-minute call for the commencement of the show, at which point they separated to make their way to their seats.

“So how do you know Henry Crawford?” Fitzwilliam asked once the gentleman in question was out of earshot and he had removed his arm from Mary’s waist.

“Do you want the long or the short version?” she asked.

“We’ve got time, have we not?” Fitzwilliam inquired in response.

“I met Henry Crawford at the Engineering sports day when I was in first year. I flattened him in a number of tackles (I was playing for Mech and he was on team Mining), and in the sort of deductive leap of which only teenage idiots are capable, he decided that the only way he could reassert himself as the alpha male in the situation was to sleep with me. Which was quaint, but even eighteen-year-old idiot me was having none of it. I mean even if he weren’t the most reprehensible shit, the point remains that he is entirely not my type. Of course my continued disinterest hasn’t stopped him from attempting to take liberties with me whenever we happen to be in the same place, which seems to be regrettably often. Indeed there was a period after my initial spurning of his advances when he assumed that I just wasn’t that way inclined and proceeded to try to set me up with a stream of delightful women, until I was forced to take him aside and explain that just because I wasn’t remotely interested in him didn’t meant that I wasn’t remotely interested in men in general. I suppose the real pity is the fact that he’s intelligent and interesting and if he weren’t such an absolute tosser, we’d probably be excellent friends.” Mary paused for a moment. “How do you know Henry Crawford?”

“I don’t. I know _of_ him. His older sister is a friend of a friend. I’ve heard of him, and seen him at various events, but we were never introduced so I only just put a face to the name.” He decided not to mention that in his opinion, Mary may have misinterpreted the reasons behind Crawford the Younger’s overtures, as in this case, discretion was likely to be very much the better part of valour. They reached their seats, and as Mary engaged in the complex task of arranging full skirts such that they wouldn’t crease, he looked over at his companion just as she floated herself into her seat and asked, “Pardon a potentially indelicate question, but have you got some kind of corsetry on under there?”

Mary looked at him in a slightly confused manner. “Clearly. Why do you ask?”

“I could feel boning through your shirt when I was pretending to be a slightly territorial boyfriend,” he answered.

“Thanks for that by the way,” Mary commented, before continuing, “You saw Henry. Do you really think that eighteen year old me would be able to survive playing rugby against him if I were some little slip of a thing? Aggressive redistribution of volume is the only thing stopping me from looking like a soviet wrestler whenever I’m in formalwear.”

“And when you’re not in formalwear?” he enquired, dropping to a whisper as the lights were lowered and an announcement came on asking patrons to switch off their mobile phones.

“I’m a woman in mechanical engineering,” she replied as if that were an answer in and of itself, before explaining, “sometimes it’s handy to look like a soviet wrestler.” She paused a moment, “It’s handy to keep the lads slightly afraid of me.”

Mary then kicked herself internally for letting the cat out of the bag on her previous tactics. Not that they had been working, and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been lovely thus far, but it was still not exactly the sort of image she was aiming to project. Not that she knew what image she was aiming to project. Mary was starting to get the feeling that eight and a half years of being surrounded by engineers might have stunted her social skills somewhat. And they hadn’t exactly been tip-top to begin with.

When the lights came back on at the end of the first act, Mary looked over at Fitzwilliam to see that he was looking at her. “Pity about the guy they’ve cast as Alfredo.”

“How so?”

“You mean apart from the fact that he has no facial expressions and only one super weird hand gesture and literally zero stage presence?”

“Well yes, there is that. That’s someone who should have stuck to oratorios.”

Mary raised her eyebrows in concession to that point. “Given the fact that everyone else seems capable of expression, I’m amazed that they managed to find someone that beige.”

Halfway through the second act, when the curtain was lowered to facilitate a scenery change, but the lights stayed down, Mary laid a hand on Fitzwilliam’s arm to get his attention. “I’ve finally figured out what was bugging me about the costumes,” Mary whispered.

“Something was bugging you about the costumes?”

“The women are, and this is stepping past the fact that their skirts and overskirts are designed to have bustles underneath them, which they do not, dressed in some unholy amalgam of 1860s to 1880s women’s fashions. The men, however, with their trousers instead of breeches, the fact that half of them are wearing neckties and the other half are wearing Edwardian cravats, are dressed for the early part of the 20th century.”

Fitzwilliam looked mystified. “How on earth did you pick up on that?” he asked, looking in the direction of the stage which was, of course, still dark.

Mary paused for a period lengthy enough for Fitzwilliam to look back at her, before taking a deep breath and letting it out. “I went through a semi-concerted goth phase when I was younger. There was a lot of steampunk involvement.” Mary glanced over at Fitzwilliam, who seemed to be struggling not to laugh. “It was an awkward time!” she protested.

Fitzwilliam let out a strangled chuckle, before patting the hand which Mary then realised was still resting on his arm. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be laughing. It’s just… looking at you now, I would not have expected that.”

Mary leaned closer as the curtain rose again and whispered, “I’ll take that as a compliment,” before turning once again to the stage. It didn’t escape her notice that her hand was still on his arm, and his hand was on hers. It was, however, far too late to remove it, and so Mary settled in for the inevitable breakup scene. Of the opera, that is.

After the inevitable breakup, followed by second interval, followed by the inevitable reuniting, forgiveness and death scene, and the (mostly) well deserved applause (Alfredo not having improved as the opera progressed, and thus being rather less deserving), they stood and exited along with everyone else, at which point Mary sighed. “I forgot how prevalent entitled man-babies were in opera.”

Fitzwilliam snorted. “They’re the only character trope which pops up reliably in every work ever. How on earth could you manage to forget that?”

“The constant pressure of the patriarchy pressing down on my psyche has led me to the warped perception that such things are normal and thus below my notice, and so they slip my mind until thrust under my unobservant feminine nose by some male composer who most definitely thought that his male protagonist was a #GoodGuy and #NotAllMen?” Mary replied drily and with a slight smile.

“Any chance I could take you out for coffee tonight so that you can continue what I’m sure is a lengthy diatribe you have prepared on the topic of the patriarchy and insidious chauvinism in the Arts?” he asked when they reached the lobby, as Mary waved to a small cluster of other women who seemed to be waiting for her.

Mary seemed to blush slightly. “I’d love to, but I’m tutoring a bunch of classes tomorrow for which I still haven’t prepped solutions, and I can’t support the sort of late night shenanigans I used to get up to as an undergrad. Perhaps some other time?” She retrieved a heavily decorated business card from her clutch, and handed it to Fitzwilliam, before placing a hand on his shoulder, rising up, and kissing him on the cheek. “Thank you for an excellent evening. You were a wonderful companion.”

As she took a step towards her friends, he glanced down at the business card, which was entirely not what he had expected from a PhD candidate, insofar as it was heavy grade paper of an excellent quality, with some abstract watercolours accented with gold leafing on one side, and various hand-written contact details on the other, along with the phrase ‘commissions negotiable’. Looking back up at Mary’s retreating form, she spun and waved before exiting in a throng of whispering and giggling womenfolk.

Switching his phone back on, Fitzwilliam took a moment to shudder at Tristan’s inevitable reaction to his inescapable rendering of the evening’s events. When reception returned, he saw a text from Darcy saying that he was working on some statements, and wouldn’t mind a second set of eyes on it if he had nothing better to do. Which he didn’t, and since it gave him an excuse to put off Tristan’s inquisition at least temporarily, he headed back to Westminster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Those of you who like a good, strong, Mary-centric plot should pop over and read 'i'll write you harmony in c' by magneticwave if for no other reason than the fact that it’s a 32k oneshot, and mad props for that. Find it here - http://archiveofourown.org/works/475201  
> The Mary in that fic is perhaps a bit too preachy and idealistic for my tastes, but there are some excellent moments, and the sexual tension between her and arch-nemesis Henry Crawford is spectacular. While I objected to the ending (I thought it was a bit abrupt and convenient when there could have been some solidly crunchy angst and soul-searching), it’s an excellent fic nonetheless.  
> I have shamelessly lifted the idea of Henry Crawford as slightly despised/slightly arousing/heavily problematic university acquaintance from that fic.  
> More insights and fun little extras on my writing blog: cynicinafishbowl.tumblr.com


	2. A Brunch and an Engagement Party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mary Bennet meets Caroline Bingley, and resolves to become best friends with her; and attends an engagement party, which turns out not to be a complete chore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, like the one after it, slots in between chapters 9 and 10 of _Politics and Profanity_.

Mary was making her way to some posh townhouse in Belgravia under sufferance. She had been happily puttering about in excel and MatLab, formatting results before she could insert them into LaTeX, when Elizabeth had called her, asking why the fuck she wasn’t outside. Realising that she had let her time run away from her (wildly disappointing, considering how productive she had been), she had thrown on a shirt which was actually fit for wearing in company, swapped her flannel pyjama pants for jeans, and laced up her latest (and current favourite) pair of steel-cap boots, blue suede with some silver leaf she had affixed during her last procrastination kick, grabbed a sweater she had knitted back when she was an undergrad who had time for knitting, and went to meet Elizabeth, checking that her handbag had some mascara and lipstick in it before running down the stairs.

“I don’t see why I’m necessary for any of this, Lizzie,” she complained when she was outside. “I’m submitting my thesis literally three days before Jane gets married, so I’m not going to be able to be exceptionally helpful in the lead-up.”

“Jane wanted you there, and the last thing you want is for Mama to somehow hear that you weren’t helping Jane with the wedding, now would you?” Elizabeth threatened.

Mary glared at her, pulled earbuds out of her pocket, and pressed play on her current playlist, which she had labelled ‘Light Doom, Instrumental Black, and Assorted Baltic Folk Metal’. It was, with the exception of a bit of light German industrial metal which she had mixed in for some contrast, very much what it said on the tin.

They got on the train, and by some miracle were able to find seats, at which point Elizabeth pulled out that week’s copy of The Economist, and Mary pulled out her mascara and did her best to stop herself from looking like a sleep deprived zombie. Despite having the darkest hair in the family literally everywhere else, she had somehow managed to end up with eyelashes which were solidly blonde, which meant that if she ventured out in public without artificially blackening them, people tended to ask if she was sick. She then grabbed the lipstick rolling around the bottom of her bag to see what she was going to wear that day. It was navy blue with iridescent blue flecks. Elizabeth was going to hate it. Mary smiled and set about applying.

Jane’s fiancé’s sister’s townhouse was in a fantastic part of town, the sort of neighbourhood where everyone’s pet dogs were larger than their children. Mary followed Elizabeth up a set of steps, and waited as she knocked. A moment later, the door was opened by someone who looked like the archetype of a lesbian DJ, from the multiple piercings everywhere to the cut-out singlet with fluorescent Nike sports bra visible underneath, to the black skinny jeans tucked into turquoise Timberlands, and the iridescent streaks in her hair. Mary could see that she was being similarly scrutinised, from simultaneously sensible and faintly ridiculous footwear, via jeans with the odd small paint or engine grease stain here and there, past the randomly striped chunky fisherman’s sweater, to the dark blue lipstick, all paired with a handbag in a shade which could only be described as ‘Barbie’s Dream House’ pink. Their host raised an eyebrow, and Mary raised one in return.

“You must be Elizabeth and Mary. It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Caroline.” Mary couldn’t help but notice that Jane had clearly not adequately prepared Elizabeth to meet this intriguing personage. Elizabeth’s experience of the lesbian scene was limited to Charlotte Lucas, who was quiet, and sedate, and surprisingly not that artsy in her dress and way of living, despite working in the fine arts. Mary, playing women’s rugby, which ran at about 50:50 lesbians to straight women, was far more versed in the nuances and eccentricities of the community. She also got the feeling that she and Caroline were going to get along great.

And then Mary saw the cavernous kitchen with its marble benchtops and professional-grade appliances and decided that she had to ensure that they got along well, because she had never been able to test the statement that marble countertops were the best for making pastry, and she wanted to see if that was indeed the case. Mary then saw that she knew two of the four people already occupying the kitchen. One was her eldest sister Jane, who was sitting next to someone who looked like a ‘nice young man’, whom she assumed was Jane’s new fiancé. She also recognised one Major Evelyn Fitzwilliam, who had looked up in surprise at her appearance, but seemed to have recovered himself admirably, and next to him, a gentleman who could only be described as ‘eccentric’. Mainly because he was wearing a waistcoat in neither an ironic nor post-ironic manner.

This eccentric gentleman turned out to be his older brother, Tristan, the –th Earl of ----.  Who proceeded to greet her by kissing her hand. Mary raised her eyebrows at Fitzwilliam minor, as if to ask if this was normal behaviour. He shrugged eloquently. Mary was too occupied with the fact that the kitchen was fitted out with two (!) Kitchenaid standing mixers, thus qualifying it as her own personal heaven, to take too much notice of the rest of the conversation, except to note with approval that Caroline Bingley seemed to take her tea seriously. Elizabeth, who claimed not to be able to tell the difference between teabags and loose leaf tea, was insufficiently impressed by this. Mary, on the other hand, was delighted that her eldest sister had had the presence of mind to attach herself to a chap with a delightful sister. Following a brunch wherein Mary offered no substantive suggestions past agreeing to do a bunch of baking for Jane’s kitchen tea (mainly because she knew that it would get her an invitation to play with Caroline’s appliances, and because it would give her a productive avenue of procrastination) and had a brief but heated debate on how best to make all of the baked goods look like male genitalia, but predominantly engaged in a wealth of entertaining conversation on the topic of acoustics – Caroline turning out to be Fitzwilliam’s DJ friend – much to Elizabeth’s chagrin (she tended to get a bit bored when Mary got onto the topic of her various areas of study – her undergraduate honours had been on acoustics in concert hall design).

Mary tuned out of the conversation while the Hen’s night was planned, for two reasons. The first was that Jane’s bachelorette party was the night after the day she submitted her dissertation, and if she by some miracle happened to be still conscious then, it would make no material difference as to what the evening actually was, because she would be, to borrow a phrase from one of the visiting Australian students, ratfucked (or was it rat-fucked – she had never thought to ask whether it was hyphenated or not). She re-entered the discussion when it invariably turned to dresses, because Caroline didn’t have a semi-retired couturier for a mother and so wasn’t following when the Bennet girls started waxing technical, so she suggested vague sketches, and with Jane’s doctor handwriting meaning that she also couldn’t draw to save her life, and Elizabeth’s constant avoidance of talking to their mother (who, now that Jane was engaged, was really starting to worry that Elizabeth would be on the shelf forever. No mention was made of Mary in these conversations, because everyone, especially Mary, had given that up as a lost cause long ago) meant that she was rather behind on the actual designs. And so, Mary found herself scribbling approximations of dress shapes which strongly (and perhaps unsurprisingly) resembled a combination of trusses, sine curves, and parabolic trajectories.

At the end of the morning, as the goodbyes took place, Mary found herself pulled aside by Caroline. “You’re wearing hand decorated steel caps, aren’t you?”

“How did you know?” Mary asked. People generally saw the general outline of them and assumed she was wearing very custom Timberlands.

Caroline gave her a look which asked ‘really, bitch?’ “I am well versed in the world of sensible footwear, Mary dear. Where did you get them?”

“I did it myself. It’s a bit of a business. I like to say that ‘I only take commissions’, but that’s just code for ‘I couldn’t be arsed with setting up an Etsy store, so people just give me their boots, we discuss what they want, and then I paint it at an obscene mark-up’.” Mary reached into her handbag and fished out one of her business cards, which was hand decorated and lettered. The product of a procrastination session. “I also do other things along the same line, where I modify existing items.”

Caroline took the card and reciprocated with one of her own, pulled from god knows where. “Once you’re finished with university, we are going to have a very detailed talk about all of your artistic pursuits.” Caroline then turned to air kiss Elizabeth, saying, “Eliza, it has been an absolute pleasure to meet you.”

“I generally go by Lizzie,” Elizabeth corrected, looking slightly surprised that Caroline had managed to not pick up on an entire morning of everyone referring to her as Lizzie.

Caroline simply looked Elizabeth dead in the eyes with a blank expression, and then with a smile which notably didn’t reach her still staring eyes, said brightly, but with a tone of some menace, “And _I_ shall call you Eliza.”

Mary found herself forgoing breathing so that she wouldn’t laugh.

 

Mary’s attendance at Jane’s engagement party was less under sufferance. Less, because it was an occasion to chat with Caroline again, not to mention Fitzwilliam, as it was his brother who was hosting, so he was bound to be in attendance, living there, and over bi-weekly chats over coffee, she had become very adept at ignoring her crush on him. Over one of those chats, she had learned that his mother and Bingley’s mother had attended university together, and so they had known each other peripherally throughout their childhoods, so it was only fitting that Tristan should host Bingley’s engagement party. That and the fact that Caroline had organised to have the interiors repainted long before her brother had seen fit to get himself engaged, so the house in which he was currently residing was out of commission for entertaining. And apparently, if Caroline’s constant snapchats of the horrors of living in a house while it was being painted were anything to go by, out of commission for actually residing. Still under sufferance, because she couldn’t be in a room with her mother without her asking the dreaded question of ‘how’s the PhD going?’; and she couldn’t be in a room with her father without him bringing up some horrifically embarrassing story about one of her various awkward phases while growing up.

Mary was chatting with her younger sister Kitty – Kitty’s twin Lydia, the most ‘adventurous’ and ‘precocious’ of the five girls according to their mother (they all had adjectives for her, but they definitely weren’t those two) was thankfully off at some regatta somewhere and couldn’t attend – when she saw a familiar haircut and groaned. Kitty, who had just spotted Maria Lucas, didn’t notice, because she was already on her way to say hello to her friend and/or hang out with the only other person her age at the event. It mattered not which. Mary, on the other hand, barely had time to grab a passing glass of red wine (she didn’t know what it was, but she did know that it was well out of her price range as a partially employed student, and it was delightful, so she wasn’t complaining) before she was facing one Henry Crawford.

“Are you stalking me?” she wondered aloud, “Or do all rich white people know each other.”

“My elder sister is apparently a friend of yours. I just followed along because engagement parties are just packed with delightful specimens of womanhood such as yourself, drinking away their anger at the world.” He was, as was his general way, clearly undressing her with his eyes to see if she would flinch.

Mary, who was wearing the one dress she kept from her goth phase, along with a lipstick which she tended to refer to as ‘the red of the blood of my enemies’, knew that she looked good, with a definite undercurrent of scary, as was her usual way, and did not flinch. “Who’s your sister?” she asked.

“Mary Crawford. She’s a major benefactor of St. ----‘s, which is where she met your sister back when she was just a med student on placement. They are, apparently, rather good friends.”

The name sounded familiar to Mary for some unplaceable reason. She mentioned this to Crawford, who pointed to a corner of the room, where Lord Tristan was conversing with a willowy woman who Mary immediately recognised. “Your sister is Mary Crawford, the occasional guest Harpist for the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Phil?”

“You’re familiar with her work?” Crawford enquired, looking slightly surprised.

“You know for a fact that I’m involved in a lot of chorus work. We’re all familiar with the appearance of the members of the orchestra closest to the choir stalls. Not to mention the stories surrounding your sister’s brief hiatus from performance. Which can’t actually be the case, because they’re all too ridiculous. I was always of the assumption that she just went on an extended holiday. I assume I was correct?”

“In a way,” Crawford conceded. “It was rather the usual. She met some ancient oligarch and potential Chechen war criminal, although nobody knew that at the time, and married him on a bit of a whim, he was obliging enough to kill himself seven months later when the ICJ brought charges, which I suppose does upgrade him to highly probable Chechen war criminal; leaving her with a stinking great fortune and nothing to do with her time except go back to performing, and doing charity work when she wasn’t.”

“That’s almost exactly what I had heard,” Mary admitted.

“Shall I introduce you?” Crawford enquired.

“Clearly,” answered Mary, only pausing to elbow Crawford in the side when he tried to put an arm around her waist as they walked across.

“Mary,” he said, when they reached her, “this is Mary Bennet, an old friend from engineering rugby. Mary, this is my sister Mary, who as you are already aware, plays the harp professionally and has shocking taste in husbands.”

Mary Crawford smiled and shook Mary’s hand. “It’s a pleasure.” She paused a moment, scrutinising Mary’s face. “You look loosely familiar.”

“BBC chorus,” Mary answered. “I’m the mezzo with the massive glasses.”

“So you are!” Mary Crawford enthused.

What followed was a delightful half hour spent discussing the merits and styles of various conductors, while Henry Crawford became progressively more bored, and eventually left to play billiards with some of the men. Which was not a course of action which Mary had realised was still available in that day and age.


	3. Phalluses à Choux, and the Twilight of One's PhD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Mary remains oblivious, Lord Tristan is anything but subtle, and we meet a friend of Mary's.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm going to flag now that in order to fully appreciate this chapter, you should read this post from my blog ( http://cynicinafishbowl.tumblr.com/post/159636876186/heres-an-excerpt-because-i-feel ), and watch the video linked in it. The excerpt itself is reproduced more or less exactly in the chapter, but the explanation is relevant.
> 
> This chapter, like the previous one, fits in before chapter 10 of the main fic.

Caroline and Mary spent many an afternoon debating the specifics of what should be involved in the kitchen tea. Caroline was firm in her belief that the choux paste phalluses should be one piece in their construction. Mary knew from experience that choux paste was a strange and unpredictable medium, which was designed to frustrate the hopes and dreams of anyone with enough hubris to attempt shaping more complicated than a faintly spherical blob or a tube of indeterminate length and girth. This, in combination with the fact that she was the one doing the baking, and didn’t particularly care about other people’s thoughts on the matter, meant that she won that argument.

Over the course of the occasional planning chat in the leadup, Mary began to suspect that Caroline was being intentionally contrary just for the sake of it, and so gave up on trying to convince her of things (given that she had more or less full autonomy over her contributions), and just argued for the hell of it.

It was during one such argument, the night before Jane’s kitchen tea (which Mary eventually googled, having never heard of one, only to find that it was a less formal version of a wedding shower), after a dinner of the best Malaysian takeaway which one could find in a posh part of London (i.e. nowhere near as good as the sort of ethnic food which one could find where there was an actual population of ethnic people, but not actively bad), as Mary was mixing eggs into yet another batch of choux paste that we return to the narrative.

“I just realised that I haven’t actually asked you this, and that was definitely remiss of me, but are we not… I don’t know, wildly overcatering? I have a hazy recollection of someone saying twenty or so guests, and I’ve done enough baking for at least sixty. And that’s phalluses à choux alone. Then there’s the tiny sandwiches, the various savoury nibbles which are being delivered, the brownies, the cake… Have people been told not to eat for three days beforehand?”

Caroline shrugged. “Catering for the number of people who are actually coming is so gauche. In the event that people who had not confirmed their attendance were to show up, what then? Not to mention that Charles is rather a fan of cakey things. And he’d be terribly upset if there were none left over.”

The doorbell rang as Mary started transferring the paste to a piping bag. Caroline returned with the Fitzwilliam siblings, who seemed to be inexplicably appearing whenever she was in the company of Caroline. “I hope you don’t mind terribly that I dragged Evie along,” said Lord Tristan, after exchanging air kisses with Mary, “but I simply must steal Caroline away for a while, and I thought that you might like someone to keep you company while I did.” With that, he swept from the room, taking Caroline with him.

“Hello again, Mary,” said Fitzwilliam, undoing his cufflinks and rolling up his sleeves. “Any material change to your life and/or circumstances since this afternoon, when I helped you feel better about not working on your dissertation because it allowed you to tell yourself that you were engaging in social interaction with someone who wasn’t one of your cubicle-buddies? Note that in no way did I unequivocally ask you about the state of your dissertation, and any jury in the kingdom would agree with me. Is there anything I can help with?”

Mary took a moment to shake herself out of the momentary distraction brought on by an attractive military man rolling up his shirtsleeves in her presence, and mentally kicked herself for still not having extricated herself from her little crush. “Firstly, it was very much implied, and fuck you very much. It’s fine. I reformatted a few graphs before I came here. I’ll probably change them back later tonight. I don’t know yet. I’m submitting it in three weeks and the fact that it’s done and proof-read and doesn’t need to be sent to the printers for another week but is nonetheless done is freaking me out, and I keep making immaterial changes and then changing them right back.” Mary braced herself against the countertop for a moment and took a few deep breaths. “Also, I’m realising that I keep having panic reactions whenever I talk about it, which cannot be healthy, but given that I submit it in three weeks, I’m just ignoring it until then. And I’m fine when I’m tinkering with it or writing, but I freak out whenever I talk about it.” Mary spun around and sat with her back against the side of the giant island which dominated the kitchen space.

“Mary! Are you alright?” Mary could hear him making his way around to her. She couldn’t see it because her eyes were shut, because her vision was starting to get super fuzzy, which was a new and unpleasant development in her pre-submission panic.

“Just got super dizzy with like zero warning. The panic responses seem to be escalating. This is super unhealthy. I’m fine,” she said when he crouched next to her and put a hand on her shoulder, “it’ll pass.” Mary patted the floor next to her. “Have a seat. Let’s talk. Any changes in the couple of hours since we last spoke?”

“Literally none,” said a very guilty sounding Fitzwilliam. “How are you feeling?”

“Slightly nauseous,” Mary answered, opening her eyes, and immediately thinking better of it.

“Does this happen a lot?”

“Just the last week or so. It’s super disconcerting and is literally the worst. My mother called me yesterday to check in and I almost hyperventilated.”

“How has this not come up before?” he asked.

“You’ve actually been really respectful of the whole ‘you’re not supposed to ask people about their dissertations’ social convention.”

“Wow. Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No, it’s passing. It always does.” Mary opened her eyes and turned to look at Fitzwilliam, resting the side of her head on her knees. “Thanks for keeping me talking. The distraction helped me stop obsessing over it.”

“If you ever need someone to talk to, I’m available.” He got to his feet and offered Mary a hand to pull her up.

Mary cracked her neck, straightened her apron, and felt the contents of the piping bag, which luckily for her, was still warm. “If you could pass me that stack of baking trays and also never mention this momentary lapse in composure, that would be massively appreciated.”

“Is there anything else I can help you with?” Fitzwilliam enquired, setting down the requested items.

“No thanks. I just need to pipe the dicks and get them in the oven.”

“Come again?”

“I’m making cock and balls shaped baked goods for Janey’s kitchen tea. It’s going to be hilarious.”

Fitzwilliam froze for a moment and blinked several times. “I honestly have no response to that.”

“And nor should you,” Mary smiled sweetly. “That’s rather the point of it all.”

Once the choux shafts were in the oven, Mary set to the next task on her ‘to make’ list, which was three dozen eggs worth of lemon curd. Such a quantity, requiring constant whisking, was not the work of one set of arms alone, and so she and Fitzwilliam were trading off whisking, while the conversation had somehow wended its way towards statistical theory, in that strange and inexplicable manner that it inevitably did when someone with a degree in mathematics and someone with a degree in engineering were talking about anything and either numbers or facts came into the discussion. Mary was insisting that standard deviation was a terribly blunt instrument when Caroline and Lord Tristan reappeared. Caroline immediately set about making a pot of tea, and Mary, having enlisted Lord Tristan to take over her post at the whisk, fiddled with the temperature knobs on the oven, which had begun to beep at her.

“Caroline tells me that you’re making some rather risqué baked goods,” Lord Tristan commented.

“It’s going to be hilarious,” Mary and Caroline said in near unison.

“Penises almost always are,” he noted sagely.

The next morning, Mary, who at one in the morning had been denied exit and had been chivvied into one of the guest rooms for the night, popped back to her residence hall in order to shower and change into clothing which wasn’t covered in the carnage of a night of constant baking (and slightly more to the point, clothing in which she was fit to be seen), and returned to Caroline’s house to continue with the preparations.

Mary had just finished pumping various fillings into the vessels baked the night before when the doorbell rang. Caroline was up a ladder hanging some foil streamers, and so Mary volunteered to see to whoever it was. She opened the door and had not even had time to say anything before a stroller containing a child which looked to be about four was shoved in her direction, and a small woman in her mid-thirties said, without so much as a glance in Mary’s direction, “No gluten, no chicken, and no gelatine. And make sure that he only engages in mindful play-based activities.” She then swept past Mary to the entrance to the parlour, where Caroline had just appeared. “Oh, Caro, I’m so glad that you finally started hiring help. Tarquin is being absolutely beastly, and I’m honestly not in the mood to have to deal with him while I suffer through the company of the family and friends of Charles’ latest darling.”

Caroline looked to be torn between bursting into laughter and looking horrified. She landed on an uncomfortable giggle. “I don’t think you two have met. Louisa, this is Mary, younger sister of Jane, soon to be our sister-in-law. Mary, this is Louisa, my older sister.”

Mary shoved the pram back towards Louisa with a bland smile. “Charmed,” she commented, breezing past back into the kitchen, with Caroline following her.

“I’m so sorry about that. Louisa can get a bit…” Caroline seemed to be searching for a descriptor.

“Presumptuous?” Mary suggested mildly.

“I suppose that’s one way of putting it,” Caroline noted.

Twenty minutes later, the doorbell rang again. Caroline was on the phone, and mouthed ‘Could you?’ with what was an apologetic look in the direction of where Louisa was attempting to reason with what had to be the worst behaved and tempered child Mary of whom had ever had the misfortune of being within earshot. Mary raised her eyebrows and nodded. She made her way to the front of the house, hoping that whoever it was was someone who actually knew Jane, and didn’t assume that she was hired help like Bingley’s other sister had.

“Mewwy!” cried a delighted toddler when she opened the door.

“Hi Wally,” she said with a smile, crouching and hugging the child, nodding at his parents. She had babysat little Walter Wentworth on many occasions. “How are you?” she asked.

“I’m thwee,” he declared.

“That must be terribly exciting,” Mary agreed gravely, before hoisting him up on her hip as she stood. “Still hasn’t mastered rhotic consonants?” she asked, exchanging air kisses with his mother, and a firm handshake with his father.

Anne Elliot-Wentworth, a college friend of Jane’s who now worked as a GP in an all-female practice in outer London, and who was Mary’s go-to doctor, grinned. “It’s a work in progress, although he’s getting better with fricatives.” She booped her son on the nose, before returning her attention to Mary. “I’m actually glad we caught you, because I wanted to know if you were available to look after Wally… When is it, darling?” she asked her husband.

“The weekend after Jane’s wedding,” he provided.

“I think I’m free, although I’d have to check to be certain,” Mary answered.

“As usual, we’re totally fine with you taking him along to whatever you end up doing. It’s just that my father is getting married, again, to someone about half his age,”

“Again,” provided her husband, Captain Frederick Wentworth.

“And the wedding’s on the French fucking Riviera, and honestly, I don’t see why Wally should have to be dragged along when I’m just going to have to park him with a babysitter when we get there,” Anne concluded.

“Mummy said a bad word,” Wally noted.

“Your father’s a sailor, darling, who taught mummy all the bad words she knows, so why don’t we blame him, my little puffin?”

“I taught her nothing,” Wentworth protested, horrified.

“And who’s going to believe that, my darling?” Anne asked in an altogether too innocent fashion, pecking him on the lips and facing Wally. “Say goodbye to Mary, and go have fun with daddy.”

Mary crouched down so that Wally could stand up. “Bye-bye Mewwy,” he said, squeezing her with his little arms, and then licking her cheek. Mary raised her eyebrows as he ran towards his father, who looked to be trying not to laugh.

Anne covered her face with her hands. “I’m so sorry about that. He thinks that’s how air kisses on the cheek work.”

“It’s charming,” Mary said with a chortle. “It helps that he’s absolutely adorable and otherwise excellently well behaved.”

With a final wave, Wentworth and Wally walked back down the steps (or more correctly, Wentworth walked, and Wally jumped, his legs still too short to manage most staircases), and Mary led Anne inside, to be met by Caroline who was by then off the phone and making her way to greet them.

“I’m so sorry about that, I had a work call,” Caroline said, offering a hand. “I’m Caroline Bingley, Charles’ younger sister. Welcome.”

“Anne Elliot-Wentworth.” They shook hands.

“You’re the one with the super shady overproof moonshine gin?” Caroline asked.

Anne reached into her handbag and pulled out what appeared to be a bottle of Absolut Acai and a bottle of Bacardi 151. “These were the only bottles they had,” she explained with a grimace.

Caroline chuckled in a particularly malevolent manner. “Oh no, that’s actually perfect. We are going to get people fucking turnt.”

“I’m sorry I’m early,” Anne said as she followed into the kitchen where set-up was taking place.

“No, not at all!” Caroline protested, “You’re the only one who knows how strong this stuff actually is, I need you to mix a few pitchers of cocktails.”

“You assume that anyone, the Welsh university students who distilled it in particular, actually knows how strong it is,” Anne admitted with a sense of foreboding.

“Yolo,” Mary offered. “This is meant to be a boozy brunch-type arrangement, is it not?”

“Good attitude,” Caroline commented.

The kitchen tea went off, if one horrifically bratty small child was ignored, without a hitch. Much hilarity was had vis-à-vis the penis profiteroles, and Mary gave out many business cards. Which, considering that she hadn’t really put much actual thought into what she would do after graduating, since she had a very steady job teaching tutorials for undergraduates, meant a nice avenue for potential diversification. Although considering the lack of double oven or standing mixer or meaningful counterspace in Lizzie’s apartment, into which she would be moving, she would probably need to come to some kind of space-sharing arrangement with Caroline. Which was not, of itself, at all a bad thing, because not only had she found that she quite enjoyed Caroline’s company, but also whenever she was there, Fitzwilliam invariably also appeared, generally having been dragged along by his older brother.

Indeed after everyone had left and the bulk of the decorations had been taken down, and Charles had arrived (true to what Caroline had said, he was delighted to discover that there were cakey things left over) and he and Jane were giggling off in the corner being generally nauseatingly cute, lo did Lord Tristan appear, dragging with him a slightly defeated looking Fitzwilliam.

“Darlings! I must have everyone’s attention!” Lord Tristan cried.

“Here we go,” Fitzwilliam muttered in Mary’s ear.

“Caroline, light of my life, bright spark of my existence, would you do me the honour of accompanying me to the gala in aid of… fuck. what was it again? Left handed gerbils or some bullshit.”

“Women in the Arts,” offered Fitzwilliam drily.

“Really?” asked Lord Tristan, “I could have sworn I’d have remembered that.”

“Left handed gerbils, Tris? Really?” enquired Caroline in as disappointed a manner as she could manage while trying to choke back the laughter brought on by Lord Tristan down on one knee, waving his arms about intermittently.

“Sorry?” he offered after a moment of consideration.

“Does this happen a lot?” Mary whispered, not wishing to interrupt the scene.

“Whenever Tris needs a date for a ball or gala or fundraiser. Caroline is his go to, just as Tristan is hers.”

Caroline paused a moment to compose herself. “Now this is terribly awkward, because as an actual genuine Lady in the Arts, I am not only invited, but I am being honoured for my work in bringing classical music to girls at state schools, so I was going to ask you along as my date.”

Lord Tristan stood. “That is terribly awkward. I, of course, am delighted to accept, do you want me in kilt or trousers?”

Caroline kissed him on the cheek. “Surprise me, darling.”

Lord Tristan turned to face his younger brother, who was at that moment, leaning over Mary’s shoulder offering whispered commentary. Upon attention being shifted to him, he straightened, almost coming to attention, before he saw Mary looking at him oddly, paused in his straightening up, and murmured “ignore me. Old habits.”

“Say, Evie,” mused Lord Tristan, “it’s about time we started trotting the Viscount ----mont out in public every so often now that you’re back. Remind people who the heir is. Socialise you.”

“You’ve got to be joking, Tris.”

Lord Tristan broke out in a particularly wide grin. “Oh no, Evie, I’m quite serious. It’s a largely ornamental title, so it’s time you started being occasionally ornamental. Take one for the team, do the side proud, all that. Be some well-behaved arm candy.”

“You have a title?” Mary asked in surprise, spinning about to face Fitzwilliam. “I thought you were just next in line to the Earldom.”

“Oh he is,” Lord Tristan confirmed with a definite note of smugness. “The heir to the Earl of ---- is, himself, the Viscount ----mont.”

“You never mentioned that,” Mary noted.

“I tend not to trot it about. It hardly fits with the times. I mean honestly, as if Viscounts are even a thing these days.”

“Well evidently they are,” she commented.

“Well, Mary, as you know I’m terribly good at playing the role of arm candy. Would you be so kind as to accompany me?”

Mary leaned against the countertop and studied him a moment. “You’re rather less theatrical than Lord Tristan.”

“Everyone,” Fitzwilliam muttered, “in the world is less theatrical than my Honourable brother.”

“Pity,” Mary said, ducking around him to her handbag, and rummaging around, pulling out her diary. “So when is this occasion?”

Fitzwilliam froze. “That’s an excellent question. When is this, Tris?”

“I’ve sent you a reminder on Google calendar. Check your email, mate.”

Fitzwilliam obliged. “The –th. Wednesday after the wedding.”

Mary flipped to the relevant page. “What’s the dress code? Is it white tie? Please tell me that it’s white tie. I don’t have any Instagram photos of me on the arm of some guy in tails.”

“Sorry, Mary. Black tie,” Caroline interjected.

Mary sighed, but uncapped a pen and wrote something, then looked up with a smile, and, to her horror, a faint blush. “I’d be delighted,” she said, eliciting a broad smile from him. “Wear a kilt,” she instructed.

After the excitement of the kitchen tea, Mary settled back into the end of her academic career. Her dissertation was saved in about five different locations, in three file types, sent off to be bound, and she tutored her classes, while waiting for her submission date. The bound copies arrived a week ahead of schedule, and sat in the middle of her desk, causing palpitations whenever she saw them, until she gave in and shoved them under a pile of sweaters in her closet.

The night before her submission date, Mary was scrolling through Tumblr, sending links to entertaining posts to her various contacts. Then her phone rang.

“Hello Evelyn.”

“Mary.”

“Yes?”

“What the fuck are you doing still awake?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” she pointed out primly.

“I asked you first.”

“Submission is tomorrow, and I can’t sleep.”

“You’re freaking out?”

“Little bit.”

“Do you have any plans for this evening?”

Mary laughed. “It’s hardly still evening.”

“Do you?”

“Obviously not.”

“Fancy a walk along the Thames?”

“What?”

“You can’t sleep, I can’t sleep, we’re going to sit on the embankment and feel sorry for ourselves. If you put on some jeans, I’ll show you something interesting. Meet you at Temple station in about twenty minutes?”

“What on earth made you think that I wasn’t appropriately dressed to go out right now?”

“It’s half past two in the morning. I’d be worried if you were.”

“Good point. I’ll see you shortly.”

Mary ended the call, threw on jeans and an old cardigan, pocketed her phone and grabbed her wallet, and was almost out the door, when she caught sight of her reflection. She was blushing like a schoolgirl. Mary fanned herself momentarily, gave it up as a lost cause, and grabbed a shawl on her way out.

Major Fitzwilliam was leaning against a lamppost when Mary saw him, his sleeves rolled up, and his arms crossed. He looked most annoyingly attractive. “Come on,” he said, offering her an arm. “I want to show you something.”

Mary was led down a very sketchy looking alleyway or two, eventually ending up knocking on what looked like the door to a cellar. He knocked, the door was opened, and he was immediately embraced by a middle-aged man of central Asian appearance, who began speaking to him in a language which Mary didn’t immediately recognise. They were led inside, into what seemed to be a small family run restaurant which catered to various cabbies, and minicab drivers, and where Mary was acutely aware of just how white she was, both in person, and in upbringing.

There was conversation, which Mary was entirely unable to follow, money was exchanged, and Fitzwilliam was handed two takeaway cups, one of which he handed to Mary. After a few more moments of conversation, Fitzwilliam led the way back out.

Once they were back at street level, Mary sniffed her cup.

“It’s tea,” Fitzwilliam explained.

Mary took a sip. “How on earth did you come across that place?”

“While we were in Afghanistan, we all developed a bit of a taste for the local tea. On a brief period of leave, our interpreter took me around to the best Afghan spots.”

“I had no idea you spoke Pashto.”

“That was Dari, and I’m not very good.”

“I’m still impressed,” Mary commented.

They made their way back to the river, and sat on temple pier, looking out over the river. Mary was feeling rather warm, and so she took off her cardigan, and was about to arrange her shawl about her person when she was stopped by Fitzwilliam’s hand on her arm, pushing up her sleeve. “Mary, what happened?” he asked, sounding horrified.

“What?” Mary had no idea what he was talking about, and was quite confused. She looked over at Fitzwilliam, who was staring at her, looking alarmed. “What!?” she asked again.

“You have a very well defined handprint-shaped bruise on your upper arm,” he said.

“Do I?” Mary asked, genuinely surprised. Fitzwilliam laid a hand on her arm, and when she looked down at it, removed it, showing, as he had said, a very well defined handprint shaped bruise. Mary laughed. “I play rugby, Evelyn. The odd bruise will crop up.”

Fitzwilliam let out a breath and ran a hand through his hair. “Mary, how could you not notice? It’s pretty bloody obvious.”

Mary covered her face and laughed. “I looked in the mirror this morning, and thought I hadn’t properly removed my mascara from the night before. It was only after about half a minute of rubbing with a makeup wipe that I realised that it wasn’t smudged makeup, it was just the bruiselike circles under my eyes. I shampooed my hair about four times after training just because I kept forgetting that I’d already done it. I could have a sucking chest wound and I probably wouldn’t have noticed.”

“Panicking about submission?”

“No. It’s done, and I’m really happy with it. I’m freaking out about what happens next in my life. I’ve been at university for nine years now. Before that, there was thirteen years of school. I’m twenty-seven and I’ve been at school my entire life. That’s about to end, and I have no idea what to do with myself. What about you? I need something to distract me from the existential dread. Surely something has changed on your end.”

“I’ve just heard that I’m being made a cadet Colonel,” he offered.

“You’ve made Colonel! That’s fantastic!” Mary effused. “When did this happen?”

“A few days ago.”

Mary swatted his shoulder. “And you didn’t think it relevant?”

“It never came up in conversation.”

“Just like the fact that you’re the Viscount ----mont, and indeed, when we first met, that you were in the military at all.”

“Now, that’s unfair,” he protested, “that came out very early in our acquaintance did it not?”

“I suppose so,” Mary conceded. “You were quite forthcoming when push came to shove.” They lapsed into silence for a while. “So how did you happen to be awake at this ungodly hour?” Mary asked.

“Every so often, I have difficulty sleeping. Unfortunate remnant of my time in the Forces.”

They lapsed into silence once more. Mary was then awoken by catcalls from a passing coxed eight. She was leaning her head on Colonel Fitzwilliam’s shoulder, and his head was resting on hers. The dawn was in the process of breaking, and Mary realised that they must have fallen asleep at some point, and checked her phone to see that it was a quarter past five in the morning. Colonel Fitzwilliam straightened and looked down at Mary. “We seem to have fallen asleep at some point.”

“When do you submit?” he asked.

“The office opens at nine.”

“Are you likely to get any sleep in the meantime?”

“Highly unlikely. I was going to see if I could wash my hair and only do it once.”

“Good luck,” Fitzwilliam murmured. “What are your plans for once it’s in?”

“Get absolutely blackout drunk with one of my cubicle buddies, and then go to my sister’s hen’s night.”

“Golly.”

“Indeed.”

“Would you like me to walk you back?”

“That’s totally unnecessary. I’m in completely the wrong direction.”

“And yet, I’m insisting.” They stood, he offered her his arm, and back they walked to her residence hall, where when it was time for them to part, they both stood awkwardly for a moment, before Mary gripped the nettle, wrapped her arms around him, and gave him a tight squeeze.

“Thanks for keeping me company.”

In disentangling her arms, Mary found her hand caught and held by Fitzwilliam. “Any time, Mary,” he said, bowing slightly over her hand. “It’s been a pleasure. As always.”

He spun on his heel and walked off into the sunrise with a spring in his step, leaving Mary contending with an unexpected blush.

 

At eight in the morning, Mary was pacing in front of the Mechanical Engineering office. She was very much regretting having a coffee that morning, because while it had taken up a good twenty minutes of her time, the caffeine was playing havoc with her already stressed system.

“Mary, you abject lunatic,” came a call from across the road, “what the fuck are you doing here already?”

“I could ask you the exact same thing, Nik,” she called back to Nikandros Agriopolos, her cubicle buddy for the past three years, and one of her closest friends. He was a strapping young lad of Australian extraction and of Greek descent, which meant that he swore like a sailor, had an unhealthy affinity for watersports, and had somehow managed to stay a dark shade of olive despite not leaving the United Kingdom for three years.

“I figured you’d be mid-meltdown by the time I arrived,” he replied as he crossed the road. “You seem suspiciously sane. You haven’t done something ridiculous like burn your copies in some kind of fugue state, have you?”

Mary produced her copies. “Nothing like that. Get any sleep last night?”

“Fuck all. How was your night? I noticed that you stopped sending me memes a bit after two. Did you get any sleep?”

“After a time,” Mary answered. “I sent a meme or two to Evelyn,”

“Who?”

“Oh, come on, Nikandros. The only male other than you with whom I spend any meaningful amount of time.”

“Oh, right, ya boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend. We’re just mates.”

“He’s ya boyfriend.”

“Anyway, I sent him a meme or two, and he called to ask why I was still awake, and to check that I wasn’t going insane,”

“Yeah, cuz he’s ya boyfriend.”

“Does your accent get deliberately stronger when you’re insisting to continue on this ridiculous insinuation?”

“Clearly, Mary, I did actually get an education during my time in the colonies.”

“Debateable,” Mary muttered, before continuing, “and he took me to this tiny hole in the wall Afghan place where, honestly, I had never felt so white in my life,”

“This shocks me, because you’re super white,” he pointed out.

“We got some tea, and then walked to Temple Pier, and sat there and chatted for a while, and evidently we fell asleep for a while, because we were woken at quarter past five by a rowing crew making lewd commentary.”

“Oh my god, Mary, the two of you are practically fucking married. Did he walk you back to your hall?”

“Yes,” Mary muttered.

“FUCK ME DEAD, THE BOY HAS A MASSIVE BONER FOR YOU AND YOU REFUSE TO SEE IT.”

“How many coffees have you had in the last 24 hour period?” Mary enquired mildly.

“An unhealthy number,” Nikandros replied, with a slightly manic smile. “Don’t you like him?”

“Yes, but I’m pretty sure he just sees me as a friend. Not to mention the fact that I’ve been surrounded by socially awkward engineers for so long that I can’t even understand social signalling any more. I don’t even know if I like him in that way, or if he’s just a friend to whom I feel some unwarranted physical attraction.”

Nikandros froze mid-pace, and stared at Mary. “What. The actual. Fuck. I just--- wow. Are you even… I mean what... fuck me dead, never mind.”

“What?” Mary asked, never having seen him this lost for words before.

“I am way too sober to even be contemplating discussing this. Just… show me your message history.”

Mary opened the relevant thread on her phone and handed it across, and Nikandros resumed pacing, scrolling through. “Good,” he said, handing her phone back to her. “You’ve been inadvertently flirting with him, and he’s most certainly been flirting with you.”

“Has he? Or is he just friendly?”

“Holy fuck, Mary, I can’t even look at you right now.” He set his bag down on the sidewalk and pulled out a bottle of ‘ginger ale’, opened it, took a long swig, and passed it to Mary. Mary, knowing exactly what was being offered, took a drink of what was predominantly whiskey, and handed back the bottle.

“I thought we were waiting until we actually submitted until we started problematic day drinking.”

“We were, but then you literally drove me to drink, so here we are. Let’s talk about literally anything else. How go the modifications to your bridesmaid dress? I am hereby giving you full leave to get super technical and I won’t even complain.”

“Really?” Mary asked, delighted.

Nikandros took another long swig, looked at Mary’s obvious excitement, and drank again. “Really,” he confirmed with a look of grim determination.

 

By ten past nine they had submitted their dissertations, and by midday they had finished the ‘ginger ale’, and were sitting in a quad, wondering what they were going to do with their lives, drinking from a bottle labelled ‘tonic water’ which Mary had brought with her. Or slightly more correctly, Mary was wondering what she was going to do with her life, since Nikandros had an offer from Rolls Royce to work in their Aeronautics division, and Mary had a solid promise that if he met Andrew from Bake Off, he would introduce her.

There then came a high pitched call of “Eeeeeeeeaah slut!”

Nikandros froze and then sighed. “Strap in, Mary, this is about to get super weird.” He took a deep breath, turned towards the source of the initial call, and replied with what had to be a rehearsed, if slightly defeated, “What, slut?”

“Can’t even be pleased to see us, slut.” The accusation came from a disgustingly muscular, indecently attractive Greek guy who was apparently acquainted with Nikandros, and who had the best eyebrows Mary had ever seen, a title which had, until then, been held by Nikandros.

Nikandros stood, gasping in a manner so camp that Mary was surprised he was capable of such campness. “Can’t even keep within the thematic and grammatical structure of the pop culture reference, eh slut?”

This was met with another gasp, notable for both its theatricality and campness. “Can’t even engage in homoerotic displays of affection when you see your best friend?”

Nikandros spun and gasped again, his hand on his heart. He then strode towards his friend, and embraced him in a comfortably manly fashion, with much back slapping, and a small element of back stroking, accompanied by a question of “What’s this then, slut?” It was only then that Mary noticed that the blond guy standing next to Nikandros’ friend seemed to be acquainted with him, as he was pinching the bridge of his nose, and muttering ‘please god, not this’.

Nikandros’ friend, who logically had to be his best friend from childhood, Damianos, upped the ante by squeezing Nikandros’ backside and enquiring “what’s this then, slut?”

Nikandros in turn asked “what’s this then, slut?” as he trailed a hand down his Damianos’ face and neck, keeping intense eye contact as he leaned in very close. Mary, who wasn’t quite sure what she was seeing, but nonetheless knew that she wasn’t complaining, settled in to watch the show.

Damianos’ eyes narrowed, as if this was some kind of challenge. “Well what’s this then, slut?” he asked, grinding against Nikandros, his hands now in Nikandros’ back pockets.

Nikandros’ eyes narrowed in response. Mary had a momentary thought that it was turning into a Clint Eastwood film, before discarding that notion, because if Clint Eastwood films contained that much overt homoeroticisim, she probably would have taken the time to watch some of them. “What’s this then, slut?” he hissed, gripping Damianos’ face and maintaining almost threatening eye contact as he leaned in without hesitation.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, would the two of you either get a room or introduce us?” the blonde guy asked, nodding in Mary’s direction. With some reluctance and a not insignificant amount of muttering, they disentangled and looked disappointed. “Oh, don’t give me that look. Nikandros, you’re too straight to go through with anything past some kissing, and Damen, we both know that Nikandros isn’t your type. And not for lack of you trying. Can we not pretend to be civilised for a moment?”

Nikandros waved them over to where Mary was sitting, one eyebrow raised. “Mary, this is my idiot best friend Damianos, generally referred to as Damen, and this is his boyfriend, Laurent. Damen, Laurent, this is Mary. We’ve been cubicle buddies for the last three years.”

“Wait,” said Laurent, his eyes widening with delight, “is this your girlfriend?”

“No,” was the unilateral reply from not only Nikandros and Mary, but also, for some reason, Damen.

Everyone turned to face him. “Nikandros only dates _nice Greek girls_ ,” the description was given in an accent which Mary recognised from the film _My Big Fat Greek Wedding_ but had thought until that point was a crude stereotype. She made a mental note to rewatch that film with Nikandros and enquire about some of her previous misconceptions. Damen, meanwhile, was still talking. “And as nice as I’m sure Mary is, she is sure as shit not Greek.”

“She could be Greek,” Laurent protested.

Both Damen and Nikandros looked at him in a manner which clearly said ‘no she fucking couldn’t.’

“Not only is she not Greek,” Nikandros said, leaning back, “she’s also refusing to admit that she’s practically dating some Major-General who’s next in line to a duchy or some other deliciously aristocratic shit.”

“What? Fuck off. No. We’re just friends,” Mary protested, to a face which clearly cried bullshit. “And for the record, he’s a newly minted Colonel, who’s next in line for an earldom. And he’s,” Mary hid her head in her hands, “apparently a viscount in his own right.”

“WHAT?” Nikandros almost shrieked. “When did you find that out?”

“Pretty recently,” Mary admitted.

“Oh shit!” Damen said in obvious delight. “At first I thought that Nikandros was wildly exaggerating and you were dating some Lieutenant who was fourth in line for a baronetcy. This is so much better than barely commissioned officers who aren’t even in DeBrett’s. Pull up his Facebook. I want to have a stalk.”

“I’m not dating him,” Mary reiterated. “And he’s not on Facebook.”

Damen looked disappointed, and Laurent sniffed the bottle they had been drinking from. “Is there any tonic water in this gin and lime juice?” he enquired.

“Not much,” Nikandros replied, scrolling through something on his phone. Finding something, he grinned evilly at Mary. “And he might not be on Facebook, but he’s sure as shit all over your Instagram.”

 

Mary then learned what it meant to really hang out with some Australian tourists in England. There followed a good eight or so hours of aggressive drinking, at least one kebab, and, although she couldn’t be entirely sure, either a deep fried mars bar or a scotch egg. It was almost certainly one of the two, but it was also the first time that Mary had drunk like an undergraduate since she had been an undergraduate. The only concrete memory she had was of the following exchange:

“Nik?”

“Yes, Mary?”

“Is it bad that I kind of want to lick Damen’s chest?”

Nikandros slung an arm around her shoulders. “No, Mary. That’s the usual reaction he elicits.”

“I wouldn’t mind licking your chest, if we’re being honest.”

“Thanks, Mary.”

She then made her way, somewhat sloppily, to Jane’s hen’s night. She remembered none of it. Allegedly she made her entrance by slamming the door open, proclaiming, “The party don’t start ‘til I walk in, so guess which party just started,” before flopping backwards onto the sofa and murmuring something about being tormented by redcoats. Later on, reportedly, she performed a number of duets and villain songs with Caroline, to considerable acclaim. All she could be truly sure of was the fact that she woke up at a quarter to four in the morning to the sound of her sister’s phone ringing, ran to it too late to answer it and yell at whomever had the gall to call at such an obscene hour, and then was forced to run to the bathroom to be rather violently ill. She was awoken again at half past seven by Jane trying not to laugh and failing miserably.

“What?” Mary groaned, trying to figure out if she was going to be sick again, or if she just had a horrific headache.

“Last night you insisted I wake you up because you hadn’t finished, and I quote, fucking around with the bridesmaid dress mama made for you, and you wanted to get it done today.”

“I hate you.”

“You also said that you’d say that, and that I shouldn’t listen. There’s a cup of tea waiting for you in the kitchen, as well as all the painkillers you can take at once without any side effects.” Jane pulled her up and kissed her on the forehead. “And congratulations on your submission. You’re the first Dr Bennet, PhD. I’m so proud.”

“Thanks, Dr Bennet, MD.” Mary shuffled off in search of the promised cup of tea, and picked up her phone on her way. There were a number of texts and other messages from people, almost all of them along the lines of ‘are you alright’. Methodically, Mary took the painkillers Jane had laid out for her and ordered an uber, regretting her life choices of the last twenty-four hours.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's another side fic with an additional perspective to this chapter, it's called "In Conversation with Lord Tristan, and you can find it here: http://archiveofourown.org/works/10819695/chapters/24005718 .
> 
> Also, as usual, I have some stuff on my writing tumblr (cynicinafishbowl.tumblr.com), and slightly more to the point, I update it periodically even during hiatus, so check it out *desperate shameless plug*.


	4. A Sibling's Wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hangovers, bagpipes, minor first aid, major unresolved sexual tension, and some cats. Jane and Bingley's wedding from another perspective.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter happens roughly concurrently with Chapter 10 of _Politics and Profanity_ , and Chapter 2 of _Conversations with Lord Tristan_.

Mary was, not to put too fine a point on the matter, dying. She was, to quote the Australians who had caused her present suffering, ‘dusty as fuck’. She didn’t quite know what that meant, and she didn’t entirely care. She had a pulsating headache to the point where she could almost smell colours, and she needed to gather her things for Jane’s wedding, including the bridesmaid dress which she was yet to finish altering. Luckily for her, the bridal party were heading up a day early, which meant that she would have time to fuck around with buttons in the evening, when she wasn’t able to feel her own skin. Unluckily for her, it meant that she had to get all of her things together and make her way to the station where they would be catching their train north. And then spend close to three hours on a train with her older sisters, pretending that she wasn’t dying, lest they start reminiscing about their youths.

Mary arrived well before her sisters, which was astonishing given the fact that she had spent a good hour and a half lying on the floor of her room, feeling sorry for herself, followed by ten minutes spent picking which lipsticks to bring (she decided on black for that day, as it rather aptly encapsulated the state of her soul at the time). This was, however, expected. What wasn’t expected was the fact that Jane wanted to talk to her once they were on the train. Jane had seen Mary that morning. Jane was well aware of the fact that Mary was dying. And yet Jane wanted to talk to her. Elizabeth was reading The Economist in an irritatingly smug manner. Not that there was any other way to read it, but in Mary’s fragile state of not remembering to fill her waterbottle with some kind of electrolytic fluid before she left her residence, it was still grating.

“What?” Mary asked, trying to ignore the pulsing in her temples brought on by creating noise.

“Charles and I were discussing what we wanted playing while I walk down the aisle,” Jane said, thankfully not noticing the momentary ‘who the fuck’ face Mary had made before remembering that Jane was engaged to a man named Charles.

Mary knew how that statement was going to end, and had no idea why Jane had decided that then was the ideal time to bring it up, when all she wanted to be doing was scrolling tumblr and occasionally messaging Nikandros with death threats. “And like the nauseatingly adorable white people that you are, you decided that Mary Crawford should play Pachelbel’s Canon on the harp?” she enquired sweetly (or as sweetly she was capable, given the circumstances), before returning to a description of how she was going to eviscerate that antipodean douchebag who had led her down this path to ruin.

“No,” said Jane, in a move which Mary was not expecting, “we wanted some bagpipes.”

This was an interesting development. Unfortunately, it was not one that had been adequately thought through. “You do realise that I don’t have my pipes with me,” she pointed out, “they’re at home.”

“I know. Kitty’s bringing them.”

As much as Mary didn’t trust any of her family to handle her pipes, she did probably trust Kitty the most. Which wasn’t necessarily saying much, but was definitely saying something. And this meant that finally Mary could put a decade and a half of playing the bagpipes to good use. “So I have a number of suggestions as to what would be good--” she began, accessing a playlist which she had entitled ‘Pipes and Drums and All Good Things’, which was very much what it said on the tin, when Jane, in a very uncharacteristic move, cut her off.

“We want you to play Amazing Grace.”

Mary snorted. “I think the fuck not.” Jane proceeded to justify their choice. Mary continued to vehemently disagree. After a while of getting nowhere, Mary just grunted non-commitally, plugged in her headphones, and listened to some soothing bagpipe music.

They arrived at some disgustingly quaint train station in the lakes district somewhere near Kendal, and were greeted by Jane’s fiancé, whom Mary was now disinclined to feel charitable towards as a result of his terrible taste in bagpipe music. During the ride to the wedding venue, Mary, who was by then feeling the effects of a night out and very little sleep the night before, alternated between dozing and messaging Fitzwilliam, complaining about her sister’s lack of taste in processional tunes. He was appropriately sympathetic.

When finally they arrived, Elizabeth started glaring at random men (which wasn’t really a change for her), Jane and Bingley went off somewhere to do adorable about-to-be-newlywed things, and Fitzwilliam took Mary off to see the grounds, promising stables and horses with ridiculous names. It transpired that he and Darcy had spent much of their free time as youths gallivanting about the estate, and he was well acquainted with its layout. And not only did Mary appreciate a good horse now and again, it would give her an opportunity to complain about her sister’s terrible taste in bagpipe repertoire without said sister looking all attacked when she did.

“So at the risk of opening a particularly angry can of worms,” Fitzwilliam said, as they walked arm in arm towards the stables, “what is your particular objection to Amazing Grace?”

“Is this a funeral for a policeman in the United States?”

“Valid point,” he conceded.

“Not to mention the fact that in order to have any sort of melodic differentiation, it ends up at dirge pace. And it’s boring as shit. And _common_.”

“And what would you suggest instead?”

“Literally anything. That’s the point. I could play ‘Someone Like You’ on the bagpipes and absolutely nobody listening would have a clue that I was ripping off Adele, because nobody actually listens to the bagpipes. They tend to just tune them out.”

“I listen to the bagpipes,” Fitzwilliam said with a shrug.

“Seriously?” Mary asked, stopping in her tracks.

“Seriously,” he confirmed. “I’m a fan of any instrument with a built-in drone.”

“You’re in the extreme minority,” Mary commented.

“So what?” Fitzwilliam asked, holding open the door to the stables for her. “I’m in the minority that gets to listen to bagpipes.”

Fitzwilliam was halfway through introducing Mary to the collection of cats which lived in the stables with the horses, when Mary had a brainwave of moderate evil. “I just realised something,” she said, scratching behind the ears of a cat which was, statistically speaking, most likely to be named Fitzwilliam (apparently Darcy’s younger sister had named all of them when they were born. Four males and two females, five of which were named Fitzwilliam, and the remaining one of which was named Fitzwilhelmina, partially to irritate her brother, and partially to mess with everyone, because only she knew which cat was which).

“Oh yes?” Fitzwilliam (the man, not one of the cats) asked.

“As long as I play something nice and bagpipey, nobody will know or care what it is.”

Fitzwilliam raised a single eyebrow, and waited for her to elaborate.

Mary did not elaborate, because she needed to do some practice before she could begin to contemplate such tomfoolery. Instead she continued to play with [probably] Fitzwilliam (the cat).

Eventually, Kitty messaged to say that the rest of the family were arriving, and Mary went off in search of her bagpipes, checking the state of her lipstick as she went. She knew that she’d have to remove it before she got around to practicing, but black was possibly the least forgiving lipstick colour in existence, so she needed to keep that shit flawless at all times, or she would just end up looking like a sad zombie. At least by then she no longer felt moments from death. Because she had played the bagpipes with a headache once, and it was not an experience which she was overwhelmingly eager to repeat.

 

Half an hour saw Mary marching through the maze, which was really more of a waist high shrubbery with shrubs too wide to easily climb over. She was studiously playing anything but Amazing Grace. She was also realising that when one doesn’t practice or even touch an instrument in almost a year, one’s abilities will necessarily atrophy. After an hour and a half, she had shaken off most of the cobwebs, and it was starting to get dark. She then began to rather regret her choice of practice venue. Her depth perception wasn’t fantastic in low light. She was about to pull out her phone to send a plea for help, when help arrived.

“Mary!” Fitzwilliam called from the edge of the maze, “Are you in need of some directions?”

“Probably,” Mary admitted.

“Head to your left, oh no, sorry, _your_ right, _my_ left…”

Once she was out of the maze, Mary stowed her pipes in their case as Fitzwilliam said, “I hope you don’t mind, I was listening to you practice.”

Mary laughed. “I’m some idiot playing an instrument in a maze. Any audience is going to necessarily inflate my fragile ego.”

 

While Mary had been practicing, she had happened to register the fact that the interval between the drone and the first note of one of her favourite bagpipe pieces was the same as the interval between the first two notes of Amazing Grace. And so a plan was born.

A plan which found herself making conciliatory noises in her eldest sister’s direction when prompted (after all, it wasn’t Jane’s fault that she wasn’t aware of other, better options); and then saw her standing at the end of the aisle at some delightful chapel in the Lakes District, making faces across the aisle at Caroline Bingley, who was dressed like the rest of the groomsmen, with the exception of a pair of heels which were covered in black glitter. Mary herself was in her usual formalwear when her mother was involved – standard ballgown with lace overlay on the bodice and sleeves. A middle ground between  ‘Mother of the Bride’ and ‘Quinceanera’. Which she had spent many hours on, replacing the zipper (she never understood her mother’s insistence on zippers) with buttons and loops, taking in the wrists, and generally adjusting the lines of the shoulders. It had kept her busy the night before, and away from her mother’s usual hysterics.

When finally the doors to the chapel opened and Jane appeared on the arm of their father, Mary started playing. Jane was smiling so radiantly, and had her eyes so firmly trained on her fiancé that she clearly had no idea what was going on. Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. Fitzwilliam seemed to by trying to hold in laughter, with very limited success. Lord Tristan, sitting next to him, looked torn between curiosity and bemusement.

The ceremony was brief. The photographs afterwards were not. Lydia kept trying to flirt with the photographer’s assistant, Kitty’s hayfever flared up, and Mary was not wearing a dress suited for offroading. Jane wasn’t either, but the photographer seemed to be aware of that, which was not the case with regard to Mary. Elizabeth seemed to be too busy glaring at Darcy to notice anything around her. Their mother was sobbing, their father was caught between stoic and ‘in need of a drink’. But Jane was radiant, and that’s what mattered.

 

The reception was rather grand. Speeches and toast happened, tears were shed, and Mary was seated with Kitty and Lydia (their parents and Elizabeth – the maid of honour – being seated at the main table), and so was desperately attempting to run damage control in a situation where Lydia had access to an open bar. Dances happened to much applause, Caroline was DJing in the style of a crappy 80s wedding DJ, and Kitty was chatting away happily with Maria Lucas. Lydia was making use of the open bar.

Lydia collapsed into her chair. “God, I’m rekt!” she announced, flinging her arms about, and knocking a wine glass off the table. On the one hand, at least it was empty. On the other hand, it still broke. On a third hand, at least it broke into reasonably large pieces.

Mary sighed, and set to damage control. All of a sudden, however, Mary froze and went very pale, grabbing a nearby napkin and balling it up in her fist, using the other hand to hold it in place. “I fucked up,” she whispered to nobody in particular. She sat and took a moment to formulate a plan of action, only to be interrupted by the appearance of Fitzwilliam.

“Are you alright, Mary,” he asked, placing a hand on her shoulder and crouching slightly so they were level.

“Probably not,” Mary hissed. “I appear to have cut myself rather badly, and it feels like the sort of thing which requires professional medical attention.”

Fitzwilliam made as if he wanted to take a look at it, and Mary hunched protectively over her hand and grabbed another napkin to wrap around it. She was saved from further attempts by the appearance of Elizabeth, who had seemed to be nearby whenever she and Fitzwilliam were talking, and who must have noticed Mary’s ‘injured woodland creature’ posture.

“You’re hurt,” she noted.

“Well spotted,” Mary spat. She was in a not inconsiderable amount of pain.

“How bad?” Elizabeth asked.

“Probable surface stitches. It doesn’t seem too deep. It’s just bleedy.”

Elizabeth turned to Fitzwilliam, anticipating his next question and issuing instructions. “Mary knows what she’s on about. She’s been involved in or a bystander to enough mild industrial accidents to know what’s treatable with a plaster and a slap on the back, and when a professional is needed. Not to mention the fact that she has a stupidly high pain threshold which has gotten her into trouble on more than one occasion. If she says she needs a trip to A&E, she’s serious.”

“How’s Mama?” Mary asked.

“Thoroughly tipsy.”

“Good. So I could feasibly make my escape without her noticing?”

“You should be fine. I’ll tell Papa so that he can answer if she asks.” Elizabeth looked about the room, running through contingencies, both ladies thoroughly ignoring the third member of the conversation.

“Grab your shawl, and try to hide the carnage as best you can. Say goodnight to Jane and Charles and then you should be good to leave. How are--”

“I’ll go with her,” Fitzwilliam offered.

“Nonsense,” Mary protested, “I can get myself to medical attention without assistance.”

“You’re not really in possession of the full complement of working limbs at the moment, so I beg to differ,” he pointed out.

“That’s a bit rich, coming from you,” Mary retorted with an impish smile and a lot of very fake fluttering of eyelashes.

 “And which one of us is currently bleeding profusely?” he enquired mildly.

“Touché,” she conceded. “If you could hand me my shawl?” Mary enquired, turning back to Elizabeth, who was looking between them in a slightly calculating manner. “Thanks for covering for me, Liz.”

Elizabeth hugged her gently around the shoulders. “No problem. Text me with updates, ok?”

As Mary and Fitzwilliam made their way towards the happy couple, Mary commented, “You really didn’t have to accompany me. I’ll be alright.”

“Have you forgotten that we’re on an estate in the wilds of Darbyshire?” he asked. “Do you even know where the nearest hospital is?”

“I’m assuming you do, or you wouldn’t mention it,” Mary noted.

“About fifteen miles away, two towns over. And this is not an area known for having a prevalence of Ubers. Not to mention the fact that you’re down a hand or two and as such are in no state to be driving despite the fact that your blood alcohol content is probably low enough that that wouldn’t be an issue. Why, indeed, aren’t you rather on the path to tipsy? It’s your sister’s wedding.”

“Exactly,” Mary agreed, “someone has to keep an eye on Kitty and Lydia so that they don’t get too sloshed and rowdy. That and the fact that I wanted to go exploring later, because this seems like the sort of house with a massive creepy portrait gallery somewhere, and I intend to find it. Which raises the question of why you’re apparently still fine to drive.”

“Have you ever tried getting drunk while having a prosthetic leg?” Mary gave him a look which said ‘well clearly, I haven’t’, and so he continued, “If I’m not careful, I try to walk normally, as I would have back when I had two functioning legs. That doesn’t work with a prosthetic. Then I tend to literally trip over my own foot. It’s terribly embarrassing.”

“That doesn’t stop me from feeling guilty about the fact that I’m causing you to miss your friend’s wedding reception.”

Fitzwilliam shrugged. “Charles is more of an acquaintance. He’s great friends with Darcy, of course, and I’ve known Darcy my entire life, but in this case, I know that I was only invited because his sister Caroline and my brother Tristan absolutely adore each other’s company, and so I invariably find myself invited along with him.”

They reached Jane and Bingley, ostensibly to apologise for having to leave early, only for Jane to clear some space on the table, drag Mary’s hand down onto the space, and start shifting the makeshift bandage trying to take a look, whilst reminding her sister that she was indeed a surgeon, and there was no need for her to go anywhere.

“With all due respect, Janey, fuck directly off, it’s your wedding. I am not permitting you to perform major first aid on me at your own wedding, and in a dress which really can’t take some accidental blood spatter.”

“Half of the people here are doctors,” Jane pointed out.

“And all of the people here are drunk,” Mary countered.

“I say, Evelyn, you had some field medic training, didn’t you?” Bingley enquired.

“I did,” Fitzwilliam answered cagily, as if he didn’t like the turn the conversation was taking, “not that I have access to any sort of medical supplies, and also quite stepping past the fact that Mary doesn’t want some barely trained field medic botching it up.”

“Why on earth didn’t you mention that you could do it?” Mary asked.

“Because knowing how to close up a wound so that someone won’t die while they’re waiting for an evac is very different to this. And that’s still ignoring the fact that I don’t have access to the requisite tools.”

Jane gave him a disparaging look. “Surgical supplies are on hand,” she said, as if it were obvious. “I’m not in any way trying to pressure you into this, but if I take a look and there isn’t any real muscular or tendon damage,”

“There isn’t,” Mary interjected.

“Hush, Mary, three of the four of us in this conversation have medical training, and in this case, you do not, and I know how cavalier you can be with your own injuries, so don’t be too put out when I completely ignore you.” Jane returned her attention to Fitzwilliam. “If there isn’t any major damage and all it needs are some stitches, would you? I’d hate for you two to have to leave. Not to mention the fact that ‘minor boo-boo requiring a couple of stitches’ is going to get you benched for hours.” Fitzwilliam nodded. “Excellent!” Jane exclaimed. “I’m going to ‘go to the bathroom’, and I’ll meet you outside and I’ll take a quick look.”

“I’ll ask Georgiana for some antiseptic and bandages,” Bingley offered. “You grab the kit.”

Jane gave him a quick peck, and waved Mary and Fitzwilliam off. They went, as they were bid, with Jane and Bingley floating off helpfully, being generally too good for this world. Once outside the ballroom, Mary sat down on a conveniently placed staircase and leaned her uninjured side against the wall, trying to flick an errant curl off of her face, and finding that it was remarkably difficult to achieve when one hand was engaged with being injured and the other was busy keeping pressure on the first.

Fitzwilliam sat down next to her, and obligingly tucked it behind her ear. Mary tamped down the frisson which ran through her at the touch. Now was most definitely not the time for errant feelings. “May I take a look?” he asked, gesturing towards her hand. Mary sat up and offered him the appendage in question, and resting it on his thigh, Fitzwilliam began to gently unpack the napkin Mary had wadded around it. “You were right,” he remarked, sounding slightly surprised, as he set about wrapping her hand in a manner which meant that she didn’t have to be focussing all of her attention on maintaining sufficient grip strength to keep pressure on it. “It probably needs some stitches to close it up, but there’s no serious damage.”

Mary made to go back to leaning against the wall, only to find Fitzwilliam’s arm around her shoulders pulling her towards him until she was leaning against him instead, her head on his shoulder. The adrenaline had worn off, and Mary was too tired to care. “Lizzie’s estimation of my ability to triage myself is probably closer to reality than Jane’s. Jane hasn’t gotten over that time when I sustained a partial hamstring tear and slightly frayed a bunch of the tendons in the back of my knee and then proceeded to ignore it for a month because ‘it didn’t get _that_ dramatically hyperextended’, and ‘it wasn’t _that_ painful’. That and the time I broke one of my fingers and didn’t notice for a week. I’m good at injuries I can see. I’m less good at internal stuff.”

Jane arrived, bearing a number of items which looked to have been appropriated from a hospital, and a number of other items which looked slightly more commercially available. After taking a look and agreeing with everyone else’s diagnoses, she checked that they were fine, and returned to the reception when both Mary and Fitzwilliam assured her that that was indeed the case and that she probably ought to get back to her own wedding.

Once she had walked off, Fitzwilliam helped Mary to stand, and led her through a series of corridors to a sizeable library. Mary took a seat in the chair Fitzwilliam indicated, and looked around her. “A couple questions,” she began, “firstly, you knew that this room existed and you didn’t see fit to tell me? Secondly, is the library really the ideal location for this kind of thing? And thirdly, why are you handing me a ridiculous amount of…” she sniffed the amber fluid in the glass she had been handed, “bourbon?” It was a cut crystal tumbler, and it was practically full. “Are you trying to get me drunk?”

Fitzwilliam regarded her coolly. “In a word, yes,” he replied. “Studies have shown that recovery outcomes for trauma injuries are significantly improved when alcohol is involved. Also, your sister didn’t see fit to include any painkillers, and something tells me that you’re now committed to the ‘not leaving your sister’s wedding’ plan, ill-advised as it may be, and so we’re going to have to go the old-fashioned route with regards to anaesthesia. So start sipping, I want you pleasantly buzzed before I start with the disinfecting.”

Mary sighed. “Could you give me a glass of water?” she asked.

Fitzwilliam obliged and continued answering her questions. “As for why I didn’t tell you that the library existed, you didn’t ask.”

“Because you distracted me with barn cats!”

“Technically, stable cats.” Mary glared at him, so he continued. “And I’d be more than happy to show you around the place tomorrow. There is, as you guessed, an exceedingly creepy portrait gallery. As for the library being the ideal location,” he waved his arms around, encompassing the space, “it’s quiet, and it’s far enough away from the festivities that we’re unlikely to be disturbed.”

Mary, her explanations rendered, took a few deep breaths, as if psyching herself up for something, and then downed the bourbon in one go. “Fuck. Me,” she gasped as she replaced the glass and reached for the water. “That never gets easier.” She imbibed the water at a more sedate pace (although not by much), and when her eyes had stopped watering and she was able to breathe normally, she replaced that glass and raised an eyebrow at Fitzwilliam, who was staring at her with a mixture of awe and mild horror. “Shall we?” she suggested, extending her injured hand, which was already throbbing slightly less.

“What the fuck did I just watch?” Fitzwilliam breathed.

“A party trick which I discovered on a rugby tour. It’s generally when an evening goes from good to memorable. It’s not something I’ve done since I was an undergrad, and it hasn’t become any more pleasant since then. Although I commend you for not making the usual jokes about gag reflexes and swallowing.”

Fitzwilliam snorted as he sanitised his hands and then put on gloves. Saturating a cotton swab with what looked and smelled like rubbing alcohol, he paused and looked at Mary. “Are you sure about this? I can close it up, but I can’t guarantee that it won’t end up scarring horrifically.”

Mary rolled her eyes and held out her other hand. It was a patchwork of small scars from various accidents over the years. “I gave up on having nice smooth hands years ago, because I kept slicing myself on bits of swarf around the workshop. I’m honestly not at all fussed.”

“This is going to sting,” Fitzwilliam noted, unwrapping her hand and swabbing it all over, using the rubbing alcohol to clear away much of the blood.

Mary just hissed and kept as still as possible. Once it was cleaned up, Mary could see that the bleeding had stopped for the moment, but that the cut was deep enough that it would restart at any provocation unless it was held together in some way. “That’s not as bad as it looked when covered with blood,” she noted.

“No. It’s really not,” Fitzwilliam agreed.

“Are there any steri-strips in there?” Mary asked, referring to the little thin pieces of highly adhesive tape used to hold together wounds which didn’t strictly require stitching shut.

“My thought exactly.” Fitzwilliam looked through the more pedestrian supplies until he found what he was looking for. “I suppose you didn’t have to get yourself entirely hammered after all,” he said in a tone of contrition.

“Whatever. It’s done,” Mary noted.

Fitzwilliam proceeded to tape the cut closed, swabbed everything with iodine, and then bandaged up her hand. “Sorry about the extent of the bandaging,” he murmured as he worked, “the palm of the hand is just an awkward site to have to affix something.” Mary shrugged. Fitzwilliam gazed at her shrewdly. “You’re being awfully quiet. Are you alright?”

Mary took a deep breath and began to talk as if she were choosing her words very carefully, which, as it happened, she was. “One of the girls from rugby managed to dislocate her hip. She tore a bunch of stuff while she was in there, so they gave her some Ketamine while they reduced the dislocation. She woke up from what was apparently the most fantastic trip ever, and her mum was in the room. She then had to pretend that she wasn’t completely off her tits on tranqs, because nobody wants their mum to know that they now understand why people take a drug recreationally. She said it was a massive struggle not to seem super high, so she just stayed quiet. I’m well on the way to munted right now, and I’m trying to pretend that I’m a sensible, mature adult who is entirely in control of her faculties, and the only way that’s happening is if I say nothing.”

She looked up to see Fitzwilliam smiling at her fondly. “Given that I’m the reason you’re not entirely on top form at the moment, I’m willing to give you a pass.”

“Thanks,” Mary said acidly, going to stand and swaying dangerously. She flopped back down into the chair and groaned. “You just had to get me drunk when I was wearing heels and a floor length dress, didn’t you.” She toed off her heels, and stood again, this time much more stable. “I’m staying here until I sober up slightly. Right now I don’t think I’m drunk at all, which is probaly…” she giggled slightly, “probably indicative of just how drunk I am.” She swished off about the library, running her hands over the spines of the books on the shelves, before heading to the drinks cabinet and drinking two glasses of water in quick succession.

Fitzwilliam watched her progress, noting that she occasionally hopped into a few moments of waltzing with an imaginary partner from time to time. “You’re definitely going to have to show me around tomorrow, given that I’m in no state to go exploring tonight,” she called from across the room with a twirl.

“I’m taking you to a hospital tomorrow so that someone can take a look at your hand.”

“Oh, please. A good proportion of the guests are surgeons. I am sure that one of them is going to be more than capable of pronouncing me fit to go about daily life.”

“You’re talking more,” Fitzwilliam noted.

“I may have the physique of a particularly sturdy breed of Soviet cattle, but it means that I have enough muscle mass to process alcohol more efficiently than the average woman my age.” Mary took a seat on a particularly wide window ledge, arranging her skirts neatly around her. “In about half an hour I should be fine to go back out in public and interact with people without seeming like a massive lush. You can head back, I’ll be fine here.”

Fitzwilliam took a few steps towards her, until he was leaning against the wall next to where she was sitting. “I’m perfectly happy to stay here. This might come as a bit of a shock, but I do actually enjoy your company.”

Mary wondered idly when she had started blushing quite so much.

 

They never made it back to the reception. After a time, Mary was feeling rather more up to exploring, and she figured that there was no time like the present (especially when she could be using the daytime hours to socialise with the cats in the stables), and so Fitzwilliam gave her the grand tour of the estate where he had spent many of the summer months of his youth. There was the portrait gallery (suitably creepy), the old servant’s quarters (now used for storage), and the original nursery (a haunted attic if Mary had ever encountered one). Veritable miles of corridors filled with Grecian statuary, and sitting rooms where nobody would presume them to be. The music room, which contained not only an upright and a grand piano, but also a harpsichord. It was all terribly exciting.

Eventually, some time around one in the morning, Fitzwilliam deposited her at the door to the room she had been assigned in the guest quarters (he himself was situated in the family quarters, being as he was, family). Mary placed a hand on his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you for showing be around tonight. And, you know, everything else.”

“It was my pleasure,” he replied, once again popping a stray curl behind Mary’s ear, before inclining his head. “Good night.”

“Good night,” Mary said with a smile, stepping inside the room and closing the door.

The door had barely closed when Fitzwilliam heard a muffled ‘fuck’.

“Are you alright?” he enquired through the door.

“I didn’t factor in having to get myself out of this dress at the end of the night,” was Mary’s explanation.

“Come again?”

“Remember all those buttons and loops I was sewing on because they added more visual interest than a zipper?”

 “I may have recalled them being mentioned once or twice,” he answered, “zippers are so proletarian et cetera, et cetera.”

Mary opened the door, and seemed to be working to unpin her hair as she spoke. “I’m starting to think that a zipper might have been an easier option, given that I can’t really operate my left hand at the moment.”

“Ah.”

“What was I even thinking?” Mary asked, working to untangle the button on one of her cuffs from her hair. “I needed help buttoning this up even when I was fully functional. Back closures are the least independent invention ever. You’re literally reliant on other people just to get dressed.”

“Would you like some…” Fitzwilliam made a face and gestured in the vague direction of her hair, which Mary was continuing to struggle with.

Mary took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out in a huff. “I…” she slumped. “That would be really helpful.” She stepped back into the room, and closed the door behind Fitzwilliam, removing her heels and placing them in her bag before walking back to him, now a good four inches shorter than she had been momentarily earlier. “I’m so sorry to put you in this situation. I had rather been planning to have Lizzie give me a hand, but I have no idea where she is.”

“It’s alright, Mary,” Fitzwilliam said, spinning her around, and beginning to remove pins from her hair.

“Honestly, I don’t know how on earth they ended up needing this many pins for my hair. There isn’t that much. “Oh no, Mary, you can’t just do your own hair for this”,” Mary said in a silly voice meant to approximate her mother. “Of all the unnecessary…” she muttered, trailing off when Fitzwilliam rested a hand on her shoulder, thumb stroking slightly.

“Really, Mary,” he said when she fell silent, “it’s alright.”

Mary was struggling with the fact that she was entertaining wildly unplatonic feelings towards the friend of hers who was at that moment helping her with her hair. After a time, he handed her a handful of hairpins, and then looked momentarily awkward. “Shall we, umm…”

“I guess,” Mary answered with a sheepish look. There was something wildly problematic about the optics of one’s crush helping one to undress at the end of an evening. Especially when she was hyper-aware of the warmth of his hands so close to her back. And the fact that he definitely had his eyes on what he was doing, when he lightly ran his finger across a bruise on the back of her shoulder (more rugby wounds) and enquired as to whether that too was the result of sports. Mary certainly didn’t shiver slightly at his touch. That wasn’t something which had happened.

“Christ,” Fitzwilliam commented, no doubt seeing the corset which was keeping everything in place under her dress. “That cannot be comfortable.”

“It’s actually not that bad,” Mary said, truthfully. “I made it, so it fits properly, which is usually the main issue. And while it means that I don’t have quite as much bend in my spine as I might usually, it does make posture significantly lower effort. And I used mainly spiral steel boning, which means I actually have rather good range of motion.” She wiggled about to demonstrate her point. “Basically it comes down to the fact that every woman has an excellent figure, some just need more structural help achieving it than others. All formalwear looks better with the appropriate silhouette, and the improvement in the aesthetics is worth a slight reduction in my freedom of movement. After all,” she asked, with a shrug, “why on earth would I need adequate range of motion in any situation calling for formalwear?”

“I assume you’re alright to…”

“Oh yes,” Mary reassured, turning to face him and crossing her arms to keep her now undone dress in place. “I just undo the bow at the back and wiggle about a bit, and it loosens enough for me to undo the front without much effort. Thanks for… you know.”

“I’ll see you in the morning,” he said, kissing her on the cheek and leaving the room.

Mary walked across to her bed, sat down heavily, and rested her head in her hands. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck,” she moaned, just as the door burst open, and an exceedingly drunk Elizabeth burst in.

“Mary!” she said, flopping onto the bed next to her immediately younger sister. “Did I just see Evelyn departing this very room? Did something scandalous occur? Were there improprieties?”

“Go to sleep, Lizzie,” Mary said, patting her on the head. “You’re drunk.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just so we’re clear wrt phrasing in this chapter, any kind of walking while pootling some flootles is technically ‘marching’.


	5. An Evening at a Charity Gala

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Accusations are made, people don't talk about their feelings, we discover the graphic horrors of antipodean road safety advertisements, and we meet one of Mary's friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delays, fam. I'm currently moving interstate (well, technically, to the territory which is an enclave within the state I used to live in, a three hour drive away) and so a lot of my prime writing time is taken up by me driving to and from Canberra.

Mary had said good morning to Jane and Bingley (who looked unnecessarily smug), eaten breakfast, and was happily playing with the stable cats when her phone rang, startling the kitties. It was Nikandros. Mary accepted the call.

"Google has me about fifteen minutes away. So get your shit together."

"And good morning to you too, my little dewdrop of delight," said Mary, scratching (statistically speaking, probably) Fitzwilliam the cat behind (statistically speaking, probably) his ears.

"Yes, yes, good morning, how are you, how was the wedding, whatever. We can engage in small talk in the car. I get twitchy using a phone in a car, even if it is hands free. In my country, people under the age of 20, and anyone on a provisional licence isn't even allowed to use a phone for satnav. I'm not used to something as lax as 'oh as long as it's hands free it's alright'. I'll meet you out the front." With that, the call was ended.

Mary sighed, gave (in all likelihood) Fitzwilliam the cat one last cuddle, and headed back to the house to make sure that all of her things were arranged and to say her goodbyes. Although with any luck she'd make it out without running into her mother, who would go into absolute conniptions at the thought of her least eligible daughter going on a protracted car journey with a handsome young man, even if it was a handsome young man of clearly Mediterranean descent, recently extracted from the Colonies. In her mother's opinion, she'd take just about anything if it meant that Mary got off the shelf that she had placed herself upon at about age fifteen.

Mary didn't encounter anyone on her trip in and back out, although she did notice that somehow in her absence, Elizabeth had been in and collected her things - Mary checked her phone and realised that she had been frolicking with cats for literally hours - an assumption which was borne out by the fact that when she emerged from the house to meet her ride, Elizabeth and Charlotte were lurking next to Charlotte's equipage, trying not to super obviously stare at this mysterious young man who was picking her up. They weren't succeeding. At all.

Mary deposited her bags in the back of a car which had seen significantly better days since the time when its better days had been far behind it, and hands recently freed, hugged her friend in the firm, non-self-conscious manner of two dudes chilling in a hot tub, an indeterminate distance apart because they're just dudes being bros. Nine years of engineering had taught her that if one insists on being a hugger, which she did, just to be contrary, one had better hug like a dude - firmly and without ceremony. And then because Nikandros had been raised in a rather Continental manner, they kissed each other on the cheeks.

"I'm going to fucking kill you, you colossal dickweed," Mary whispered in his ear as they separated.

"The hangover was that bad, was it?" he enquired mildly as they got into the car.

"I could practically smell colours."

"Did you not hydrate adequately before you went to sleep?"

"I think when you're flirting with alcohol poisoning, no amount of water is going to stop you from being absolutely disgusting once you wake up. Also, I honestly cannot recall. I can't really recall much from our little night out, apart from saying that I wanted to lick your chest. Which, sober, I stand by in an academic sense. The rest of the night I just pieced together from various Instagram accounts and a few Snapchat stories."

Nikandros shrugged. "You need to drink water during the evening as well, Mary. When you party with Australians who are partying like it's 1999, you can't just erase that with a litre of water before you go to bed."

"Well now I know," Mary muttered darkly, before another thought popped into her head. "On an unrelated note, because I know that I will be asked about this later, why on earth were you driving down from Scotland? It's so far."

Nikandros snorted. "A seven and a half hour drive from Edinburgh to London is not that far. I grew up in Sydney. The nearest city to Sydney, and I'm not counting Canberra, because it's a boring shithole, and also really doesn't qualify as a city regardless of its pretensions, is Melbourne. Melbourne is a nine hour drive. If you're going in the other direction, it's a thirteen hour drive to Brisbane. If you're not looking for a real city, it's still over an hour to Wollongong, close to two hours to Kiama, three hours to Newcastle or Bathurst, or indeed Canberra. A seven and a half hour drive with another driver so that you can do the whole 'Stop, Revive, Survive' thing every two hours, is easy as shit. And it's the best way to see the countryside."

"Did you even need to stop to breathe while you were delivering that rant?" Mary enquired, curious.

"Do you really think that you're the first person on this tiny island to ask me that?"

Mary had to admit that that was a valid point. "Did you have fun in Edinburgh?"

"I didn't see anyone playing the bagpipes, which is what you're trying to ask."

 

"So how was the wedding?" Nikandros asked a couple of hours later once Mary had taken over driving (he had explained the concept of 'Stop, Revive, Survive', and had shown her a number of terrifying government TV advertisements about the dangers of fatigue while driving, which wasn't a problem that Mary had known to exist until then – he had also introduced her to the widely variable world of New Zealand’s road safety advertising campaigns, an odd mix of light-hearted hilarity interspersed by the odd bit of abject horror).

Mary shrugged eloquently. "It was a wedding. Jane looked lovely, my mother was a sobbing wreck, the younger sisters were sloppy drunks, Lizzie was busy with whatever her latest work vendetta entails, I sustained a minor injury, met some cats, and was given a delightfully comprehensive tour of a super creepy portrait gallery and an even creepier old nursery."

"A number of questions on that."

Mary went through the events in particular detail, much to Nikandros' not at all concealed delight. On many an occasion, Mary had to tell him to pull his head in, because it wasn't like that between her and Fitzwilliam. Her rather recent thoughts/wishes on the matter notwithstanding. It was perfectly acceptable for friends to introduce friends to the local cats no matter where they happened to be. It was in fact the only acceptable course of action when the existence of cats was known.

Nikandros kept raising his enviably perfect eyebrows in an ever-increasingly camp manner. Mary, having had quite enough of his insinuations, ignored him. When finally they reached her residence hall, he cut the engine and turned to her. "Remind me when I'm helping you move out?"

"Friday a week from now."

"I thought so. Hit me up if you're bored and want to hang out. My life is empty without research."

Mary rolled her eyes. "If I find myself at a loose end, I will most certainly hit you up."

"And if/when something finally happens between you and your 'oh my god he's not my boyfriend', do let me know."

"I probably won't, you vicarious little shit." Mary got out of the car, retrieved her things, and blew him a kiss in the most antagonistic manner of which she was capable.

 

That Wednesday saw Mary getting ready for a formal occasion with only one and a half functioning hands. This proved more of a struggle than she had initially anticipated.

Hyacinth Kirkpatrick, the twenty-two year old Linguistics and Translation major who lived in the room across the hallway from Mary, was perched on the end of Mary's bed, tapping away on her phone while offering the odd word or two of encouragement while Mary freaked out. Hyacinth, known as Cynthia to everyone in her circle of acquaintance with the exception of her mother (whose name, incidentally, was also Hyacinth), had met Mary when she first moved in, because Mary could sense an overbearing, horrifically outre mother from a mile off, and so the moment Mrs Gibson (second marriage) had finally left, Mary had introduced herself with a bottle of gin. They had been rather good friends ever since, in the way of young women who had been, perhaps, a touch too hardcore in their own ways for their families to entirely deal with.

"Cynth," Mary said in a tone of panic, "I'd appreciate your help a hell of a lot more as as actual help rather than just encouragement."

"And I would be having significantly less fun if I were helping you with your hair. I'm enjoying watching you struggle while you radically overthink everything. Your mate invited you to attend an event with him, and you are letting, let me know if I've got this correctly, your crush on him and the idiotic opinions of your sister and your hot meathead best friend freak you out about it because... what... you're worried they might be right, and that is somehow a bad thing?"

"Fuck you," Mary said, looking over at Cynthia with pleading in her eyes.

Cynthia looked right back at her and raised her eyebrows. "Would you say that you know him pretty well?"

"Yes."

"And so if he had feelings for you, you think that you'd have noticed?"

"I mean..." Mary flailed for a moment. "Probably."

"So why don't you trust that? Although honestly, you look bangin', and if he doesn't do something about that, he is truly a fuckwit."

"We're just friends, Cynth."

"Friends can bang each other, you know."

Mary responded with a flat look. "Have you met me? I am not the sort to bang anyone, least of all friends."

"That doesn't seem healthy."

"You know that's not what I meant."

Cynthia was interrupted from responding by Mary's phone ringing. Four years of friendship meant that she didn't even bother asking before answering the call and putting it on speaker. "You've reached Mary, you're talking to Cynthia, and you're on speaker."

"Hello Cynthia, and I assume also Mary," Caroline said. "This is Caroline."

"Hi Caroline," said Cynthia, "lovely to hear from you." They had never met. Cynthia just had a very chummy phone manner.

"Bitch, shut the fuck up. Where is Mary?"

Cynthia snorted. "I like her," she commented, indicating the phone.

"I'm having a hair malfunction," Mary answered in a tone which was uncomfortably close to a wail.

"Ugh, why? Mary, for fuck's sake, I'm sure you look great."

"Cynthia here, she is hot as shit from the hairline down, but from the hairline up, she's a little... little bo peep."

"So why doesn't she just do the witchcraft with the bobby pins that she does that makes it look nice?"

"One of the bobby pins fell out, so she had one random barrel curl at the back which was uncomfortably Georgian, and she couldn't get it to stay pinned, and so she took it all out and started again, somewhere along the line the plaster on her hand started to come off, and it's getting in the way, and she's just not succeeding."

"Bitch, cut your enjoyment of her struggling short, help her out, slap another plaster on her and send her the fuck downstairs."

Caroline ended the call and Cynthia grudgingly got off Mary's bed, swatted her hands away from her hair, sat her down, and got to work. "All that abuse after I helped you get laced into that medieval torture device."

"Early Victorian," Mary corrected. "Completely different silhouette."

A few moments later (luckily for Mary, Cynthia's step-sister had very similar hair to hers, so Cynthia knew what she was doing) her hair was passable enough, and she was on her way down to where Caroline was leaning against the side of a town car. "Took you long enough," she commented. Mary grumbled indistinctly.

Once they were inside the conveyance, Caroline turned to look at her. "You look good," she noted academically.

"Likewise, my dear." Caroline was dressed in a sequinned tuxedo and matching trousers. The woman seemed to have an unending supply of glorious tuxedos. This assessment was, Mary admitted, based only on two data points, but she was willing to guess that this wasn't the extent of Caroline's menswear inspired formal wardrobe.

It was a brief trip the ballroom where the evening was to take place, and where Caroline insisted that Mary be in an almost innumerable number of selfies, as well as a not insignificant number of official photographs. It was during these that Fitzwilliam and Lord Tristan appeared, in matching kilts, and joined them in a number of photographs, before Caroline insisted that Mary and Fitzwilliam have some photos of just the two of them. Then there were more selfies (Caroline was unstoppable and had a very active social media presence), wherein Mary was reminded of how hard it was to look good in selfies in general, let alone selfies being taken by someone else.

After a time, she tired of it, and after extracting a promise from Caroline that the last photograph would be deleted (it had been an absolute shocker), she found herself being pulled away by Fitzwilliam.

"Thank you for rescuing me," she whispered as they exited earshot.

"Think nothing of it. I was rescuing myself. You were just collateral rescue." As Fitzwilliam spun slightly to slide past a small clump of people, Mary couldn't help but ponder the fact that she had probably spent too much time watching Monarch of the Glen as an impressionable young lady, given her penchant for playing the bagpipes and very real predilection for men dressed in kilts.

"I forgot to ask earlier," Mary mused aloud as Fitzwilliam steered her yet further from Caroline and her prodigious selfie arm, "why do the two of you have kilts?"

"Our mother, not that you could tell from our accents, is properly Scottish. Daughter of one of the more serious minor Lairds."

Mary's crush on Fitzwilliam ratcheted up to as yet inexperienced levels of problematic. As Mary struggled to process this new development, Fitzwilliam finished showing Mary to their table, and absented himself to get them drinks. Mary, slightly parched from a stressful evening, coupled with the fact that it was easier to wear a corset when one wasn't already well hydrated (just because relieving oneself was a massive pain, so it was best to start the evening slightly dry), poured herself a glass of water, and looked about the room, before catching sight of someone familiar and groaning. Henry Crawford, as could only be expected at such an event, was making his way towards her. Mary took another drink of water and steeled herself.

As he drew closer, Mary put down her glass and drew herself up to her full height, which that evening was a serviceable enough 5'8". Of course, next to Crawford's strapping six foot two, it wasn't nearly as serviceable as she might have liked. Crawford seemed about to kiss her on the cheek, before his eyes darted about momentarily, and he straightened, looking horrified.

"Oh god," he said.

"You're being weird, even by your standards of what constitutes social niceties," Mary commented, taking another sip of water, because that was the sort of statement which needed to be punctuated by a smug drink of something. Water was not the most smug liquid, but it would do. Crawford proceeded to look more horrified. "And now you're concerning me," Mary elaborated.

"You're not..." he leaned in, his voice dropping to little more than a whisper, "did he get you pregnant?"

"What," Mary asked, devoid of expression, because she had no idea how to react, "the actual," she put down the glass and rested her arms in the most comfortable position, "fuck?"

"You were..." he gestured ineffectively in her general direction.

"I was...?" she prompted.

"You're standing here, at a charity event where the entire point is to get everyone absolutely trashed so that they donate even more than the truly exorbitant cost of a ticket, and you're drinking water, and standing with your hands on your midsection, in the general vicinity of where I'm reasonably sure the uterus goes. Given the existence of your not at all recent piece of man-candy, I jumped to the reasonable conclusion. Which you still haven't either confirmed or denied."

Mary was torn. On the one hand, her first instinct was to tell the truth, which was that she and Fitzwilliam weren't dating. On the other hand, she was reasonably certain that he was under the impression that they were dating, and she wasn't entirely sure that that misconception wasn't ever so slightly advantageous. She was saved from having to make a decision on the matter by the ever timely return of Fitzwilliam, who once again insinuated himself into the conversation with an arm around her waist and a kiss to the temple. "Sorry about the delay. Ran into an old school chum who didn't know about the whole leg thing," he explained, handing her a glass of wine which was red (Mary didn't pretend to be able to differentiate different wines by taste alone) and (as it turned out later) rather good. That also answered Mary's question of how to act.

"Thanks, darling," she said, kissing him on the cheek. Fitzwilliam raised an eyebrow infinitessimally and pointed a hint of a smirk in Mary's direction. Mary took a sip with a pointed look at Crawford, who relaxed slightly, but nowhere near completely. "Evie, you remember Henry Crawford."

"Yes," he said as they shook hands.

"Say," Mary said, her conversation with Crawford far from over, "Mary wouldn't happen to be about. I feel I haven't seen her in ages."

"The two of you didn't talk at your sister's wedding?" Crawford enquired.

"Unfortunately not," Mary admitted. "I was..." she glanced over at Fitzwilliam, who flushed slightly, "otherwise engaged."

Crawford noted the interactions between Mary and Fitzwilliam and clearly did not find them wanting. He also seemed to sense that the conversation was nowhere near over. "Of course Mary's here," he said. "She's still rather off men after the last marriage, not that I can blame her, so she keeps dragging me along to these events."

"Such a hardship," Mary sympathised. "Your social calendar must be interminable. Now where is your sister. The two of us need to make cutting remarks about... you know... stuff." It was not a strong ending to the thought.

Fitzwilliam, traitor, snorted and removed his hand from about her waist. "Have fun, my dear," he said, giving her a peck on the jaw. The boy was going above and beyond keeping up the farce. Mary coloured slightly and took Crawford's arm.

"So," she enquired, once they were out of earshot, "pregnant?"

"You still haven't categorically said anything, although I'm getting the impression that I was well off base, and let me just say that I am very apologetic, but in my defence, you were throwing off a lot of signals."

"Pregnant signals?" Mary enquired in a tone so mild that it was clear that he was skating on very thin ice indeed.

"I have already explained my reasoning."

"Jesus fucking Christ, Henry. I'm corseted. Hands resting on the midsection is the most comfortable position for your arms when you're standing."

"You're..." he looked her up and down. "Really?"

"You've known me for how many years, and you honestly thought that I somehow magically developed a killer bod whenever I happened to put on formalwear?"

"You have a proclivity for full skirts."

"Christ on a bicycle made of lava, Crawford, they're not that full."

"Well now I know," he commented.

"And now I have the most glorious fodder for cutting remarks. Pregnant. Hah!"

"Mary!" Mary Crawford cried in delight, air kissing her on both cheeks. "You look gorgeous!"

"So do you," Mary Bennet replied. "I ran into Henry and figured that you must be around."

"Mary, you make my brother's social life sound terribly dreary."

"Not at all! You're furnishing him with an opportunity to engage in uncomfortable small-talk with women of indeterminate age."

"Oh god, could the two of you please wait until I'm not right next to you before you start discussing me?"

"Henry, my darling, if you can't deal with the ladies conversing, you can feel free to fuck off," his sister said sweetly.

"Oh my god," Crawford muttered in the tone of an exasperated teenager, leaving them alone.

"Sweet lad," Mary commented.

"That's certainly one interpretation," Mary replied.

"Oh come on, how awkward could the small-talk have been for you to be making thinly veiled reference to it."

"He saw me standing thusly," Mary demonstrated, "and drinking some water, and immediately jumped to the conclusion of pregnant."

"You're joking."

"Would that I were."

"In his defence, your chap is deliciously attentive, and you were in the universal stance for 'baby in here'."

"Isn't that traditionally accompanied by a baby bump?"

"Pregnant women are smug, dear girl. Women are adopting that pose the moment their Clearblue with conception indicator tells them that their birth control failed two weeks ago."

"I'm not pregnant," Mary reiterated.

"And congratulations on the success of your birth control methods."

Mary refrained from mentioning the fact that her current birth control method was 'not having sex'. Admittedly, the only 100% effective method, but still. Her sex life, or abject lack thereof, did not need to be up for public discussion.

Mary Crawford looked up and waved at Caroline Bingley, who was mingling admirably. Caroline swanned over, and there was much air kissing.

"My two favourite Marys! What are you two talking about?"

"My younger brother jumping to conclusions about her and her chap."

"Oh yes?" Caroline looked intrigued. Given that Caroline was well aware of the fact that she and Fitzwilliam were unequivocally friends who were not dating one another, this was going to be a potentially awkward conversation. Mary was starting to realise where Henry was coming from vis a vis exasperation when some ladies were talking about oneself in the third person.

"Do excuse me," Mary said, making her way back to Fitzwilliam.

"That was quick," he commented.

"Caroline appeared, and those two can talk for hours uninterrupted. I thought I ought to leave them to it."

"Also, about earlier..." he trailed off, looking awkward. "I hope I didn't overstep."

"Not at all!" Mary protested, feelign only slightly disgusted by her abject inability to face up to her feelings and the like. "You were keeping up the charade." Perhaps too convincingly.

The evening was otherwise rather uneventful. With the exception of after the dinner, when Caroline placed one hand on each of their shoulders and said “Mary Crawford  seems to be labouring under the impression that the two of you are dating. Is there something I’ve missed?”

Mary went bright red and Fitzwilliam choked slightly. “It’s a long story,” Mary finally offered after she had buried her face in her hands for a while.

“One to which I’m listening,” Caroline said with a wolfish grin.

“Essentially, Evie was enterprising enough to play the role of fake boyfriend when he first met Crawford, and now it’s gone a bit too far to be like ‘lol was fakement’.”

“That wasn’t a long story at all.”

“Just embarrassing,” Mary groaned, blushing again. Fitzwilliam, sensing her discomfort, wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her towards him so that she could bury her face in his shoulder and hide the fact that she was colouring like the impressionable young lady at the centre of a gothic novel.

“Oh, and before I forget,” Caroline said breezily, “Evie said that he’d see you home, so I’m abandoning you to his tender mercies so that Tristan and I can get drunk in our pyjamas.” She gave them both a kiss on the cheek and disappeared again.

Fitzwilliam, fulfilling Tristan’s wish of ‘socialising the Viscount ----mont’, somehow seemed to know everyone under the age of forty at the event, and literally everyone to whom he introduced Mary made the assumption that she was his girlfriend. The exceptions being the school chums who thought that she was his wife.

“I swear that Tristan has been telling everyone I’ve ever met that I’m married,” Fitzwilliam commented on their way back to Mary’s residence.

“As long as that gossip doesn’t somehow make it back to my mother,” Mary giggled. “She would lose her mind.”

“Why would that be so shocking?” he asked.

“Because I’ve spent the past six or so years aggressively cultivating the image of being the serious daughter who doesn’t date and who will die alone surrounded by fifteen cats. If I were to start dating someone she’d no longer have to worry about one of her daughers dying a spinster, and she needs to be kept on her toes.”

“You’re terrible.”

“I know.” When they arrived, Mary took a deep breath and steeled herself. “Would you like to come in for a cup of tea? You can meet whichever girls are about.”

“I’d love to,” he answered.

As it transpired, none of the girls were about, a very odd occurrence for a Wednesday night at the end of semester. Mary set the kettle to boil  and peeled off her outermost shirt. This was the first thing she did whenever she was wearing multiple layers, as an unfortunate side effect of crisp white blouses what the fact that it was impossible to stretch in them. And so clad in the stretchy white cotton top she wore to smooth out and hide the corset underneath, she was finally able to loosen her shoulders. She glanced over at Fitzwilliam who was watching her use the corner of a cabinet to dig into a persistent knot in her rhomboid which had been a low-level irritation for most of the evening. “Sorry. It’s been tight all night. Ideally I’d be lying on the floor with a lacrosse ball under my back to really get in there, but I am making a token effort to entertain a guest.”

The kettle finished boiling, and Mary set the tea to steep, while Fitzwilliam looked around the shared kitchen space. There were a number of stick figure artworks by Stephanie, another one of the girls along the hallway, a fine arts major, stuck to the wall of the girls in their ‘apartment’. There was a collection  of empty alcohol bottles on top of the cabinets, a collection started by the previous occupants and added to by the current occupants. A number of knitted and crocheted blankets were strewn over the sofas facing the television courtesy of Margaret, a law student, and her best friend Bessie. Ji Soon, an exchange student from Ewha Women’s University in Korea had not been living with them long enough to have impacted the décor.

When the tea was ready, Mary carried it over to the sofas, and lowered herself down such that her skirts floofed around her prettily, an action which had taken more practice than she liked to admit.

“Have you been here long?” Fitzwilliam enquired as she passed him a cup of tea. It appeared that he was reverting to conversational niceties.

“Getting on to nine years,” Mary admitted. “It was part of my undergrad scholarship, and then I became an RA for my postgrad degrees because it’s impossible to get decent accommodation this close to uni otherwise.”

“It’s…” he looked to be searching for the correct phrase.

“A bit of a shithole,” Mary supplied.

“Are all student accommodations this utilitarianly hideous?”

“It’s relatively not terrible accommodation close to the university. The aesthetics are allowed to suffer significantly.”

“What’s your plan for when you finish?”

“I’m moving in with Lizzie, because now that Jane’s married, she’s going to be finding a place with Charles, and Lizzie needs a new flatmate.”

“When do you finish?”

“I’m done. My thesis is handed in, and yes, I have to defend it in a few weeks, but that’s not really a worry. I’m just staying out my lease here as I finish off the courses I’m tutoring and doing some exam supervision.”

“And then what?”

Mary flopped back against the arm of the sofa that she was leaning against. “I have actually no idea. I know that I don’t want to go into academia, and with three pretty disparate specialties in my different degrees, I just don’t know what I want to get into. I’ve been at uni for almost a decade and I don’t know what to do now that I’m done. My current plan is to just keep tutoring subjects next year and see if I’m struck by inspiration. Or failing that, just apply for every graduate job and see what I can get.”

“Anything planned for the summer break?”

Mary laughed darkly. “Catch up on sleep?”

After a while longer of conversation, combined with Mary becoming more and more suspicious as to how it was past midnight on a Wednesday and none of the girls were home, Fitzwilliam left, kissing Mary on the cheek, leaving Mary free to call Cynthia.

“Mary! To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Cynthia, did you clear the apartment to give me some privacy?”

“You’re welcome. Was he moved to lewd acts?”

“He was not.”

“Well then he is truly a fuckwit, because you looked amazing.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Cynth. You can bring the girls home.”

“We were planning to get McDonalds on the way back, do you want anything?”

“I could murder some nuggets at the moment.”

“We’ll see you in a bit.”

Mary ended the call, and barely had enough time to get out of her various layers of formalwear and into pyjamas before the other girls arrived bearing fast food. And so like some of the best evenings of her university career, it ended seated on the floor with the ladies she lived with, eating fast food in the wee hours of the morning, as they laughed over Mary’s abject lack of love life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve posted a list of the road safety ad campaigns I was talking about on my writing tumblr. The Australian campaigns are nothing on the Kiwi ones. ‘Ghost Chips’ is an iconic advertisement. That said, the road safety signs in Canberra are absolute crackers. My personal favourite is the one which says simply “Drink drive, die in a ditch.”
> 
> Find that post here: http://cynicinafishbowl.tumblr.com/post/163087622186/an-evening-at-the-opera-and-eventually-other


	6. A Confluence of Events and an Uncomfortable Conversation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HERE COMES THE CRUNCHY SEXUAL TENSION AND UNCOMFORTABLE ANGST
> 
> YOU'RE WELCOME, MY LITTLE NUGGS.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's right, my friends, I finally got around to updating. Clearly that pregnancy fic I'm writing is helping to clear the block.

“Anne, we’re going to miss our flight if you keep puttering about unnecessarily,” called Captain Frederick Wentworth from the front hall, as he leaned against a wall in an affected show of weariness. “Which, now that I say it,” he continued to nobody in particular, “is probably your intention.”

Anne Elliot-Wentworth rolled her eyes as she continued to chat with Mary, who had a three year old generally known as Wally clinging to her leg. “Your excellent husband does have a point,” Mary ventured.

“It’s not too late for me to pretend that Wally has come down with meningitis or something which precludes me leaving him,” Anne mused.

“You’re heading to the French Riviera for four days, of which the bare minimum will be spent in the company of your family, and the rest of the time will be a lovely holiday for the two of you without needing to worry about the child. Enjoy your holiday. Wally and I will, as usual, be fine. On Sunday, I’m going to take him with me to brunch with some friends, like some smug yoga-mother who wears nothing but activewear. I want some time with this delightful little accessory,” Mary said, indicating Wally.

Anne sighed, just as her husband materialised.

“So help me, Anne,” he said, crossing his arms in a perpetually exasperated manner, “I will pick you up and fling you over my shoulder and carry you out of the house.”

“Don’t make offers you can’t keep, babe,” Anne said with a wink.

“Not in front of the children!” Mary protested.

“Wally sees this sort of nonsense all the time,” Anne reassured her.

“I was talking about myself,” Mary specified. Wentworth tried, and failed, not to laugh. Anne didn’t even try. “Seriously, though, given that I’m driving you guys to Heathrow, we should probably get moving.” She turned to Wally. “It’s time to drive your unsafe for work parents to the airport. Are you ready for a very long drive with Mary?”

Wally shook his head. “I’ll stay here,” he suggested with more confidence than any three year old ought to possess.

“Sorry, my little nugget,” Mary said, as his father picked him up and held him upside down to riotous giggles and squealing, “but that’s just not an option.”

Anne groaned and selected a sweater for her son, throwing it in the general direction of her husband and hitting him in the face with it in a move that was too accurate to not have been practiced. “Fine. We can leave.”

Mary strapped Wally into his car-seat under the appraising eyes of his parents (she had three degrees in various engineering disciplines – it would take more than a child’s car safety device to stump her), and when he was restrained to their approval, Mary took to the driver’s seat of the sort of hybrid European SUV that was par for the course for yoga-mothers and their spawn. As she eased them into traffic, Anne, who was in the passenger seat, plugged an auxiliary lead into Mary’s phone and with irritating accuracy, traced the unlocking pattern the phone requested. Mary had unlocked her phone maybe twice in Anne’s presence, and neither of those times had the screen been in view. And yet here was Anne scrolling through Mary’s Pandora stations.

“Shall I just put it on shuffle?” she mused.

“I probably wouldn’t,” Mary advised, indicating. “There’s some semi-heavy scandi metal on there. And a whole bunch of other stuff probably not suitable for children.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Anne reassured her. “Freddy thought that Frank Zappa’s _Strictly Commercial_ album was suitable fare for a three year old to listen to. I have given up on age suitable listening, mainly because I’m bored of The Wiggles. Perpetually cheerful Australian pricks.”

“I have a playlist of eighties classics on Spotify. Probably the safest content on my phone,” Mary suggested, not entirely sure what would come up if her Pandora stations were shuffled.

Anne opened the app and selected the playlist. As the dulcet tones of A-Ha came through the speaker system, she asked of Mary, “So how’s the love life going?”

Mary glanced away from the road to raise both eyebrows at Anne. “What brought that neat segue in the conversation?”

“A Whatsapp notification. Isn’t Evelyn Fitzwilliam that chap you left Jane’s wedding reception with, never to return? That frightfully handsome chap?”

“Why on earth were you noticing who I was leaving Jane’s wedding reception with?” Mary asked, genuinely curious.

“Because I have no more single friends through whom to live vicariously.”

Mary snorted. “There’s nothing to see here, trust me.”

“Really?” Anne seemed almost disappointed.

“Almost definitely. He has had many an opportunity. He’s either not interested, or so much of a gentleman that he’s continually cock-blocking himself. And I spent enough time at uni surrounded by guys to be reasonably sure that it isn’t the latter.” Mary wasn’t disappointed by that at all. Not in the slightest. It didn’t irk her ever so slightly that her most comprehensive relationship was in fact fake.

“That seems unlikely, given the tone of your messaging,” Anne mused.

Mary tried to muster up some outrage at having someone reading her messages, but at a certain point she had grown up with enough sisters to have given up on such arbitrary luxuries as privacy long ago, and Anne had grown up with enough sisters to have never had any respect for such abstract fripperies, and so it was that her eldest sister’s university pal and her GP was going through her message history with a gentleman. “Are you really sure he’s not interested?” Anne wondered after a while.

“Open up Instagram, and go through my feed. On literally all of those occasions, I looked fucking hot, and no advances were made. None. You saw me at Jane’s wedding. There was some barely tasteful levels of tits out for the boys going on on my part. He had many occasions upon which he could have taken liberties, and not once did it happen.”

There was a very loud sigh from the back, where Wentworth was sitting, evidently uncomfortable. “I don’t see why you’re sighing aggressively, darling,” Anne remarked. “You’ve got a sister. Surely you’re used to this sort of thing.”

“If you’ll recall, my sister got married while I was off at boarding school. I was lucky enough to miss all of this.” He settled deeper into his seat and looked like he would give almost anything for a newspaper to hide behind. Mary was halfway through wondering if this was a trait which all fathers eventually developed when she was abruptly cut off by some dickhead in a convertible, to whom she shouted an invitation which one would not, for example, use in polite company. Out of deference to the fact that she wasn’t entirely alright with adding to little Wally’s already burgeoning vocabulary of profanities, she yelled it in French.

Friday passed in a relatively straightforward manner, helped along by the fact that Wally’s schedule was pretty tightly regimented. Saturday was not quite as easy. Mary had a rugby game, and she was having trouble leaving the house because Wally was refusing to put on clothing. And when she put him in clothing, he was refusing to stay in it.

After what felt like hours of psychological warfare with a three year old, which was harder for her to win than she liked to admit, Mary had him strapped into his car seat and was on her way to the field. It was the first time in seven years of playing that she had needed to avail herself of the cadre of husbands who ran the de facto daycare while the women were playing. To their credit, they didn’t look too surprised at the appearance of Mary with an as yet never before seen child.

The game was, to put not too fine a point on the matter, a bloody massacre. Covered in a decent amount of field, more bruised than usual, and generally a sweaty and horrific mess, Mary walked over to where she had spotted Elizabeth on the sidelines, which meant that she and Charlotte were sitting on deck-chairs, sunning themselves (if it was summer) or wrapped in blankets (when it was winter), drinking wine. On the way over, she snagged Wally from the melee of other children, hoisting him up to her hip as she walked.

“Mary,” asked Wally, “why do grown ups get to be muddy?”

“Because grown-ups are able to shower without assistance, young man.”

“I can do that,” he protested.

Mary snorted. “You’d like to think that, mate.” She looked up to see Elizabeth waving her over (as if she weren’t already heading in her direction), and walked the rest of the way over. “Lizzie, where’s Charlotte?”

“She couldn’t come, so I brought Evie along instead,” Elizabeth said breezily, and lo did a wild Evelyn Fitzwilliam appear from out of the figurative mist of other people walking around at the end of the game.

Mary was unfairly blindsided by this revelation. Not only was she starting to think that perhaps he was somewhere in the vicinity of fuckboy (an opinion firmly held by Cynthia which had spread to the other ladies in their apartment, because who invited someone to formal events and coffee twice a week for months on end and then DIDN’T try anything, despite giving off serious vibes - and Cynthia assured Mary, after reading the entirety of their messaging history, that the vibes were serious), but he was attired for the unseasonably good weather, in a short sleeved polo shirt with the sleeves additionally cuffed, and he was showing off significantly more arm than Mary had been exposed to before, and if Mary had a thing for the forearms of a man with his shirtsleeves rolled up slightly, she certainly had a thing for gentlemen with biceps and skin lightly touched by the sun, and freckles, and muscles which stretched and moved under his skin as he dismantled the picnic chairs, with his hair lightly ruffled by a passing breeze. Then he looked up and smiled at her, and was altogether just too unfairly good looking, and it was all just so….

Unfair.

He paused for a moment, taking in the view of Mary looking absolutely terrible and holding a three year old who had started playing with the hair which had escaped from her braids, and seemed to be well on his way to tired out, and seemed stunned for a moment. He then rallied and walked over to say hello. Cheeks were kissed, the gentlemen (such as were in attendance) were introduced, and Wally gave up supporting the weight of his own head and just rested it on Mary’s (very sweaty and not insignificantly grass-covered) neck.

“Evie! This is a surprise,” Mary commented.

“Elizabeth asked if I wanted to take advantage of the weather and watch some rugby. You played well.”

“We played atrociously, but thanks.”

Fitzwilliam shrugged in concession of her point. “I see that you’re…” he trailed off and indicated the general vibe of ‘unexpected child’.

“Babysitting while his parents attend a wedding in France.”

“I assume you’re going to be getting him home?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Mary said, looking down at the now almost sleeping Wally. “He is having a number of excellent adventures this weekend and I may or may not be tiring him out slightly.” The conversation lulled, and the two of them were just looking at each other slightly awkwardly, and so Mary, desirous of a shower, ended the lull. “It was a delightful surprise to see you, but unfortunately I really must be off. I’m absolutely filthy, and this one,” she said, shifting Wally to her other hip, “I should probably feed and put to bed.” With a smile that felt very but she hoped looked only slightly forced, she beat her retreat.

A bit after seven that evening, with Wally fed, washed, and asleep for the night, Mary texted Elizabeth.

_Did you happen to get any photos from this afternoon’s game?_

_I delegated photography to Evelyn. He seemed to get a few good shots._

_You didn’t feel any need to warn me as to your companion this afternoon?_

_None whatsoever._

_I hope your avocados never ripen._

_Wow, Mary. That was unnecessarily harsh._

_JFC, Lizzie. I’m already struggling with all sorts of inappropriate ~feelings~ wrt him._

_I didn’t need him showing up when I’m covered in half a field and in possession of a small child._

_It’s not the aesthetic I’m trying to portray._

_The child was a surprise, I will admit._

_And who knows. Maybe he’s into sweaty and muddy women._

Mary forebore replying to that. Instead she called Fitzwilliam.

“Hello?”

“Evie, hi. It’s Mary,” she said, knowing full well that caller ID had already alerted him to this fact.

"Hello, Mary, how are you?"

“Significantly better now that I’ve had a shower and actually resemble a human. Yourself?”

“I am perfectly alright, thank you. To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”

“Lizzie said that you were designated photographer this afternoon. I was wondering if you had any photos of me looking like a complete pillock.”

There was a moment’s pause before Fitzwilliam replied. “There are a number of photos, but you look pretty competent in most of them. There are some shockers to be sure, but in general you seem to know what you’re doing.”

“Could you send through the terrible ones?” Mary asked.

“Yes, although I do have to ask why you only want the photos where you look like an idiot.”

Mary laughed. “Because if I were to have an album on facebook of me being excellent at sports, I would look like a complete narcissist. I know a number of people with such albums, and that is how they are perceived. If, however, it is an album of me absolutely humiliating myself on a sports field, then that’s totally fine, and hooray for me.”

“Of course.”

“I recognise that you don’t have facebook,” Mary conceded, “but as you’re no doubt aware, it’s very performative. I am trying to cultivate a presence which says ‘I work well in a team, am unpretentious, have a sense of humour, and am not in it for the glory’. It’s the sort of thing one needs to think about when it comes to applying to jobs. Because they will scrutinise your social media presence and draw conclusions.”

“I… there is no reply to that. I’ll email them through.”

“Thanks,” Mary said.

“Say, Mary, would you be free tomorrow for a chat?” he asked.

“Ordinarily yes,” she said, “but I’m still childminding tomorrow. I’ve got absolutely nothing on on Tuesday, and Lizzie’s getting a new laptop right about then, and will, in all likelihood, call me at around ten in the morning asking me to come in and help her because the IT department are bloody useless, so if I’m around on Tuesday, I’ll pop in and say hi.” This was all more or less factually accurate. While she was still childminding on Sunday, outside of Wally’s swimming lesson that morning, that in no way precluded socialising.

She had, however, begun to drink of the Kool-Aid everyone was thrusting at her insofar as she was beginning to be peer-pressured into believing that he was sending romantic signals, and yet was engaging in no concrete action, which if it were true (as she was beginning to believe) was a bit of a dick move. And if that were the case, she was willing to make him wait.

Even if it weren’t the case, she already had plans that day with Nikandros, who was now going to receive all sorts of juicy gossip which he would no doubt use to support his ridiculous theory that Mary and Fitzwilliam were dating, they just hadn’t necessarily realised it yet.

And she definitely wanted to discuss the betrayal her sister had foisted upon her that afternoon with a sympathetic personage or personages, and that meant the other ladies in her apartment. So her sunday was fully booked.

“Of course. It was very short notice,” he said, with what might have been interpreted, by a sympathetic ear, as a note of disappointment. Mary was as yet unsure as to whether she chose to interpret his tone as such.

Their phone conversation ended soon thereafter and Mary stretched out on the sofa, flicking through the photographs Fitzwilliam was sending through. Only three of them were sufficiently ridiculous to be uploaded, which was a bit of a disappointment. For a game where she was flung about as much as she had been, there ought to have been a lot more photographic evidence of Mary looking like an idiot, although she did have to concede that Charlotte was a lot better at photography in general than the average lay-person.

After an early night, Mary awoke the next morning galvanised to do battle with the tiny terrorist generally known as Walter Wentworth. She needn’t have bothered. It appeared that while young Wally didn’t like wearing clothing when he went to the park, he had absolutely nothing against it when it came to leaving the house to go to his swimming lessons.

Mary herself, in an attempt at postmodern performance art or some such, clad herself in head to toe activewear in the manner of a very yuppie-scum late-twenties-to-early-thirties university-graduate-but-the-only-important-degree-she-got-at-uni-was-her-MRS probably-sleeping-with-the-yoga-instructor has-a-child-named-after-a-roman-emperor kind of person. She couldn’t help but note that she fitted right in with a good two-thirds of the assorted mothers and sundry in attendance.

After getting little Wally showered after his lesson, Mary was beginning to see the merit in wearing moisture-wicking synthetic fabrics. She was drenched from the knee down from the effort of trying to keep a three-year-old hooligan under the flow of water long enough to get the chlorine out of his hair. By the time they made it to the location where she was meeting Nikandros for coffee, a mere half hour later, she was completely dry.

“Mary,” Nikandros said with not at all concealed distaste, when he heard her approaching and looked up from his phone, “why are you dressed like a yoga mother?”

In response, Mary led Wally out from behind her.

“Mary!” said, Nikandros, now alarmed, “why do you have a small child of indeterminate age like a yoga mother?”

“Relax. I’m childminding. He isn’t mine. Although to be honest, I wouldn’t be too put out if he were, because he’s a bit of a champ. Say hello to Nikandros, Wally,” she instructed once Wally had clambered onto a chair. He waved silently and solemnly.

“You have got to be joking.”

“This seems like a pretty elaborate joke set-up, even for me,” Mary pointed out.

Nikandros shrugged in concession to that point, and caught the eye of one of the staff. Once they had ordered and their drinks arrived, he leaned back and enquired as to the quality of her weekend.

“You’ll never guess who accompanied Lizzie to my game yesterday.”

“You’d be surprised who I might guess,” Nikandros countered with evident glee. “Of course he did. He’s your boyfriend.”

Mary sighed a long-suffering sigh, and noted that Wally was busy poking the froth of his lukewarm hot chocolate with one of his fingers, and had no interest whatsoever in their conversation. “Even if that were the case, which it most patently was not, I was sweaty and covered in mud and generally dishevelled and definitely not looking, you know, presentable in the slightest.”

“None of which he cared about, Mary, because the boy is clearly absolutely besmitten.”

“And if that were the case, my good man, might he not have acted upon such besmittenness before now? Indeed if that were the case, why has he not acted upon that same besmittenness?”

“Is that even a word?” Nikandros asked.

“Maybe,” Mary answered, indicating that he should answer her earlier question.”

“Well, Mary, why haven’t you acted on your crush?”

“Because I have a crippling fear of emotional attachment, have literally zero relationship experience and as such have no idea how these things work, and am perfectly happy to ignore the issue because I am super good at denial. Also, you know, the insecurities et cetera.” Mary smiled blandly.

Nikandros smiled back with equal blandness. “So on a point-by-point basis: bullshit, wahh, and no shit. Allow me to elaborate,” he continued when Mary drew breath to reply. “Obviously I’m not touching the insecurity issue, because no thank you. As for the other points, I think that your crippling fear lies not in emotional attachment, but in the thought of the emotional effort which you think will be involved. Because let’s not lie to ourselves here, you’re already emotionally attached. You’re just worried that a relationship will require some huge outlay of feeling or whatever, which it won’t, because spoiler alert, you’re already dating, you just haven’t made it past the sexual tension stage because you refuse to just have a conversation and define the relationship. Secondly, as we have already discussed, your abject lack of relationship history, if a torrid affair with Meriam and Kraige’s suite of mechanics textbooks are discounted, as I have, is of no consequence, because as I keep telling you, the two of you are already dating. You just refuse to see it as such. Finally, I do not dispute that you’re excellent at denial. If anything you’re a bit too good, and this is not a situation wherein you ought to be honing your skills.”

“Nikandros, you have been cheerleader for this perceived ‘relationship’ from almost day one.” Mary pointed out.

“And that changes anything? You’re an adult, Mary. You can sit down with the lad and have a discussion like grown-ups and sort out what the shit is going on between the two once and for all. Because you’re what? Twenty-seven? And he’s what? Thirty? Thirty-five? Forty?”

“Twenty-six. He's about thirty,” Mary answered.

“You’re both too old to be avoiding the issue this pointedly.”

Mary sighed. “Speaking of avoiding the issue, he wanted to meet up today to ‘chat’, whatever the fuck that entails.”

“And how is that any different from literally every time you see him?” Nikandros asked, nonplussed.

“It’s all in the phrasing,” she explained. “Generally one of us will just message the other and ask if they want to grab coffee. Or we’ll already have organised a meeting time the last time we saw each other,”

“So you mean at the end of your dates you schedule your next date?” Nikandros interrupted.

Mary gave him a withering look and continued, “but either way, it’s never phrased as ‘wanting to chat’.”

“And will you be having your ‘chat’ later today?”

“No, because I have other things with which to occupy myself,” she indicated Wally, “and because I didn’t know what he meant by ‘chat’, so I’m avoiding until Tuesday.”

“But Mary,” Nikandros said with excitement, “he could finally be grasping the nettle.”

“What nettle?” Mary asked, “and why would he suddenly decide to grasp it now.”

“You know exactly which nettle. The nettle wherein he’s madly in love with you and has finally decided to do something about it.”

“So the nettle which is nought but a figment of your imagination, given that you’ve never actually met the guy, let alone discussed anything with him.”

“Honestly, Mary, I don’t need to have. I’ve read your message history. He’s either a massive fuckboy,” Nikandros glanced over to the small child and seemed momentarily guilty for swearing, continuing, “which given your opinion of the guy, seems unlikely, or he’s madly in love with you and either afraid of rejection, or he thinks you’re not interested and he doesn’t want to be #ThatGuy. As for why he might only just now decide to grasp it, tell me, were you by any chance in possession of that one when you happened to see him yesterday?”

“I was in possession of him,” Mary confirmed. “His parents are remarkably ok with me just taking him along with me as I go about my day.”

“And you said he was maybe thirty or so?”

“I did.”

“That’s settling down age.”

“And that is relevant why?” Mary asked wearily.

“Don’t play the fool Mary. He’s a chap of a certain age, you’re a lady he likes, and he just saw you looking after a small child, which means he now associates you with the idea of motherhood. This may have been that push he needed.”

Mary stared at Nikandros in disbelief for a long moment, before breathing “What the _fuck_?”

Nikandros crossed his arms and looked smug. “Don’t believe me if you like, but I’m trying to prevent you from being further blindsided. And like Cassandra, I shall be proven right, but it’ll be too late for you then.”

“You, my good man, are out of your fucking mind.”

“Get back to me on Tuesday and tell me I’m out of my mind then.”

“I will.”

“Good.” Nikandros turned to Wally. “And how old are you?” he asked.

“Three,” Wally said with more gravitas than a three year old should have been able to muster.

“An excellent age,” Nikandros mused. “And tell me, young man, do you have any pets?”

“At home there’s two fishies and also dad.”

Nikandros snorted and returned to the adult conversation. “Three year olds are fucking mental. Old enough to think that they can carry a conversation, but young enough not to realise that they really can’t.”

“He’s a real cracker,” Mary agreed.

After a few minutes of chat after a very obvious, but thankfully uncontested change of topic, Mary’s phone buzzed with an alarm. “I have to get this one home, feed him, and then pick up his parents,” she apologised. “It’s so nice to catch up in a non-university-adjacent manner. Also, you’re full of shit.” She kissed him on the cheek in the manner of the Continent, left Wally under his supervision as she went to pay, and then returned for the child, wiping his now rather sticky hands and face clean and then hoisting him up to her hip so as to exit more swiftly than his motor skills would allow.

Nikandros pulled out his phone and snapped a quick photograph, showing it to Mary. “I figured that maybe you didn’t know what you looked like right now, because you look like wife/mother material.”

“Nik, such antiquated gender roles are beneath you,” Mary said breezily, refusing to concede his ludicrous point.

“Of course they are. It doesn’t change this aesthetic,” he pointed out, indicating her general direction.

Mary rolled her eyes and made her exit. Wally, to his credit, only made a token protest when she tried to strap him into the prison of his car seat. Following a lunch-related adventure wherein Mary learned why Anne had recommended not to let Wally have peanut butter (he wasn’t allergic, Mary’s thought process had gone, so what was the harm?), they were back in the car on their way to Heathrow, a journey where Wally decided that he would speak the colour of every car they passed. Eventually Mary snapped and put on the CD of The Wiggles which was already lurking in the CD player. Wally sang along badly. To his credit, he could carry the tunes well enough, and for a three year old was making a valiant effort, but his mastery of the lyrics left much to be desired.

When they arrived at the pickup area, Anne got into the car and immediately switched off the CD. “Why do you do this to yourself, Mary?” she asked, saying hello to her son.

“He was naming the colour of every car we passed. I was going insane.”

Wentworth snorted. “He does enjoy doing that.”

“Was he all right?” Anne asked Mary.

Mary shrugged after signing an exceedingly rude invitation at a driver who swerved into her lane. “He didn’t want to wear any clothing yesterday when I took him along to my game, but nothing I couldn’t handle. The wedding was good?”

“The wedding was utterly classless, and I had to spend time with my estimable sisters and father, which was truly horrific in and of itself, but you know, family and all that.” Anne waved a hand airily.

 

Monday was taken up by teaching, and Mary couldn’t help but notice that there was better attendance than one might usually expect for that point in the semester, including a number of people who she knew weren’t on the list for her class. Mary didn’t mind students not enrolled in her tutorial attending, because she remembered the luck of the draw that was tutors from her time as an undergraduate, and had attended a number of tutes for which she was not enrolled, because the teaching quality was better. It was however slightly disconcerting to walk into a room that should have been at best half full and find it packed with students who looked far too eager to learn than they should have been by then.

That evening was communal TV night for the girls in her flat, where they all sat on the floor and watched whatever abject trash someone had dug from the depths of the internet. Currently it was an Australian renovation-based reality television program to which Nikandros had introduced Mary, and which Mary had shared with the flat.

It wasn’t quite Game of Thones, in the pantheon of things for which to have what probably constituted a viewing party, but then ever since that show had ended, nothing had ever really measured up.

The fact that nothing really measured up meant that Cynthia noticed when Mary texted Fitzwilliam to let him know that she was going to be around Westminster around two in the afternoon, because lo and behold, Elizabeth had requested technical support. How her otherwise capable sister managed to be so useless when it came to setting up electronics (or debugging software, or installing software, or killing non-responsive programs, or really anything past word processing and email) was entirely beyond her.

“Who are you texting?” Cynthia asked.

“You know exactly who I’m texting,” Mary replied.

“What does he want?” Now that Cynthia had decided that he was a fuckboy, she had no more excitement to expend on his interactions with Mary.

“He wants to ‘chat’, whatever the fuck that means, and since I’m tech supporting Lizzie tomorrow and as such will be in the area, I’m going to drop by.”

“Mary,” said Cynthia reproachfully, “what did I say about rearranging your schedule to accommodate his requests? That’s classic fuckboy behaviour from him.”

“Don’t worry, Cynth,” said Mary with a smile, “in the true spirit of #WasteHisTime2kWhatever, I have told him that I’ll be around from 2, when in fact I know I’ll be busy with Lizzie’s nonsense until 3, and I have a physio appointment at 4, so he gets half an hour of my time at the absolute most.”

“Fine,” Cynthia conceded, “I will allow that.”

Mary gave her a look which said ‘alright then, child’, and went back to her texting.

When Tuesday came, and she had finished installing Adobe Acrobat (which honestly, any idiot could do just by continually hitting ‘enter’ on the instal wizard), Elizabeth handed her a stack of papers. “Could you give those to Evie when you see him?”

“How do you know I’m going to see him?” Mary asked, knowing for a fact that she hadn’t mentioned it to Elizabeth.

“He mentioned it. And even if you didn’t have plans to see him, you do now, because he’s having leg troubles and can’t really carry things.” Elizabeth indicated the door and moved on to the next task, leaving Mary no recourse but to sigh heavily and make her exit. “Thanks, Mary,” Elizabeth sing-songed as the door closed behind her.

Mary found Fitzwilliam with no immediate evidence of leg troubles, until he stood up and grabbed some crutches, because his artificial leg was not in attendance. “Forget one of your shoes this morning?” Mary enquired, depositing the pile of whatever it was on his desk and giving him a hug hello.

“Ingrown hair,” he explained. “It’s absolute agony in the prosthetic.”

Mary took one of the seats facing his desk and he took the other. “When Lizzie said you were having leg troubles, I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t this.”

“Yes, well,” began Fitzwilliam as he rested the crutches on the floor next to his chair, “when Lizzie first found out about the leg she damn near had a heart attack.”

Mary snorted. “I don’t know how that was a surprise to her. From the way you walk it’s pretty bloody obvious that either you’ve had about fifteen knee and ankle reconstructions, none of which were done by a particularly skilled surgeon, or you’re missing everything below the knee.”

“In her defence,” he pointed out, “you do have a degree wherein you specialised in the design of prosthetic limbs.”

“In the defence of my general tone of derision,” Mary countered, “she has eyes.”

Mary pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose slightly and regarded Fitzwilliam before continuing, “You wanted to talk about something? I’m chivvying things along merely because I have a physio appointment this afternoon, followed by an event that I’m helping run as a favour to the undergrads, who are using me for all I’m worth for as long as they can.”

Fitzwilliam shifted slightly and looked a touch trepid, before galvanising himself. “Relatively early on in our acquaintance, it was strongly suggested to me that your focus was on completing your degree, and that not only did you not need any distractions, you wouldn’t at all welcome any distractions,” he began, very vaguely.

“Let me guess,” Mary said, “Elizabeth?” Fitzwilliam indicated that her guess was correct. “She wasn’t wrong,” Mary continued. “My chats with you kept the cabin fever from setting in, but anything more than that and I would have been worried that I was cheating on my relationship with my research.”

“She recommended I wait until you were done with all that,” he went on, “because I had mentioned to her that I was…” he cleared his throat, “that I wanted to get to know you in a romantic sense, and I was told in no uncertain terms to save it for later.” He paused momentarily. “And now that you’re done with your studies, it seemed like now was as good a time as any,” Mary took off her glasses and started cleaning them because she needed an excuse not to make eye contact and this was as good as any, and he kept going, “to see if you might be interested in,” he took a deep breath, “changing the tone of our acquaintance.”

Mary finished cleaning her glasses and put them back on before she spoke. “As I understand it, the tone of our acquaintance up until this point was limited by your consideration of the fact that I was studying full time and as such probably not emotionally available.”

“Yes.”

“And now that I am no longer studying, you wish to enquire as to whether I would like to experiment with unconstraining the tone of our interactions, with a view to us no longer necessarily being just mates.”

“Yes. I am asking if you’re interested in giving dating a try.”

“Dating,” Mary repeated.

“Yes.” Fitzwilliam confirmed. “Me specifically.”

There was a long silence before Mary considered the fact that she probably ought to respond somehow. “This comes as quite a surprise,” Mary began, having apparently lost any semblance of ability to do anything other than state the obvious. Now that Nikandros, like Cassandra, had been proved correct too late to help her, various insecurities started flooding in, preventing her from doing what was the obvious next move, which ought to have been putting the chap out of his misery by telling him that of course she was interested, and perhaps doing so in a manner which didn’t make it seem like she’d had a crush on him for months. Instead she found herself worrying about things like what would happen if it ended badly, or she realised that she just didn’t like him any more, which was a worrying thought when she considered that in the space of a few months he had become one of her closest friends.

Fitzwilliam was still waiting for her to speak, evidently having said his piece. “Look,” Mary began, buying herself time to sort through her thoughts at her leisure, “I’m sorry, but” Fitzwilliam’s face fell, and Mary held up a hand to stop his train of thought, continuing, “I need some time to think about...how I feel and the like. I’ve been in such a little bubble of study for so long that I honestly don’t know how I feel about dating in the short term, because I’ve only just become free enough to have a life that isn’t dominated by university.” She paused, gathering her thoughts. “My hesitation is born out of the fact that I’m not sure I know who I am as a person without my study being one  of the defining points of my identity, so I just… don’t know.”

It wasn’t a definitive no, and Fitzwilliam seemed to pick up on that, but he certainly picked up on the fact that it wasn’t a definitive yes. Mary needed some time to workshop answers and scream her frustration at the moon and have a cadre of friends around her decrying him for blindsiding her like this, and that was going to take time.

“I’ll…” Mary stopped herself before she continued. “I need some time to think about what I actually want in the short term, and I’m sorry if it seems like I’m screwing you around, but I just need to figure things out before I can answer your questions,” Mary trailed off weakly, thinking, meanwhile, in a mutinous manner, that if he had been upfront about his interest from the beginning and just told her that he was happy to just be friends until she was ready for something slightly more involved, then the conversation might have been playing out very differently for both of them. Mary glanced at her phone and stood, picking up her handbag. “I’m sorry to just dump that on you and leave,” she said, thinking ‘not that you’re much better when it comes to dumping things on people’, “but I have to go. I’ll…” she grimaced, searching for the words she wanted. “I’ll let you know when I’ve figured things out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *MAD CACKLING*
> 
> hmu on tumblr, babes.


	7. An Assignation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating has changed, babes. Be aware.

Mary’s mind was in tumult, so she did what she did best - avoided the issue for the time being. This was aided by the fact that she had an appointment with her physiotherapist, Eleanor, who was sure to keep her mind off things through what probably constituted physical torture. Or at least would had she not consented to it, and were it not masquerading as ‘health care’. Mary had been seeing the same physio since halfway through first year, and the two of them had the sort of rapport where Eleanor could ask if it was too painful, Mary would say yes, and Eleanor would ignore her.

Like every appointment, when Mary’s name was called and as she followed Eleanor to the treatment area, Eleanor asked, as she always did, “So how are things?"

Mary chuckled darkly in response as she changed into the shorts in her handbag. “Do we have any kind of doctor/patient confidentiality thing going on here?" she wondered aloud, getting ready for half an hour of someone sticking their elbows into her hamstrings.

“Medically, not particularly; socially, none whatsoever. Why? What juicy gossip do you have for me?"

“Just the collapse of my understanding of interpersonal interactions."

“A specific answer, as ever."

Mary heaved a sigh. “Just the heavy betrayal of thinking I'm friends with a guy, and then it turns out that he was just biding his time until I was done with postgrad so that he could try asking me out."

“Wow rude."

“Right?" Mary asked, immediately wincing as Eleanor found a particularly tight stretch of muscle.

Eleanor chuckled malevolently and kept digging, both physically and literally. “So are you interpreting that as a dick move, or a courtesy, considering how stressed you were."

“See, I don't know. On the one hand, I'm glad I wasn't saddled with any weird emotional shit while I was working on my thesis, but on the other hand, it might have been nice to have a heads up about it."

After Mary had finished gasping from the latest round of torture, Eleanor asked, “So you like him, despite his fuckboy antics?"

Mary shrugged. “He's a great guy, and he's nice and he's funny, and he's SOOOOO hot."

“Ah yes. There we go. A mitigating factor. Do you have any photos?"

Mary reached into her handbag, retrieved her phone, and opened instagram. She pulled up some relevant posts. “Do you see why I'm torn?" she asked.

“Buddy, I'm not into guys but he is bloody attractive. I can see how that might be a struggle for you. You say he's a nice guy."

“He is. Which, again, annoying."

“Have you told him your feelings on the matter?"

Mary laughed. “God no. He told me that he liked me romantic-stylez, and I was like 'welp, I have shit to do this afternoon, I'll get back to you on that one, kthxbai."

“Mature reaction."

“I know," Mary preened.

“And apart from this excellent fun, what else do you have on this afternoon?"

“There's been an unfortunate burst of viral gastro tearing its way through the undergrads. They've got a major networking night on tonight, and most of the young idiots running the mechanical engineering student society are out of commission."

“So they've dragged you out of retirement?" Eleanor asked, finding a particularly painful area of muscle to attack, causing Mary to swear colourfully for a moment or several.

“Oh, hi Mary," called one of the other physios, so used were they to Mary's reaction to pain.

“Of course they dragged me out of retirement," Mary ground out when she had regained enough self-control to speak.

“You didn't give enough of your time to them during your undergrad?"

“Or my first postgrad?" Mary asked, pre-empting the followup question. "Probably, but at a certain point, they needed bodies, and I didn't have anything else on. And there's free booze, laid on by the faculty, so there's also that."

“Mary, for someone as young as you, it worries me that you're this cynical about the way the professional world works. How have you not drunk the networking Kool-Aid?"

“You're like four years older than me. You don't get to play the 'as young as you' card."

“I'm four years older than you, I very much get to play that exact card."

When her torture was finally over, Mary made her way to the hall where the annual engineering ‘Students Meet Industry’ night, an evening wherein various firms set up a stall and talked to eager undergrads about prosaic things like jobs and employment. These stalls invariably had one graduate from the university there to show that they were serious about recruiting, and so it was also an excellent evening for the postgraduate students to see old acquaintances while enjoying the free drinks which the faculty provided. Mary, always a fan of seeing old classmates and drinking free wine (not to mention the fact that the engineering faculty tended to provide decent plonk) and wearing jeans with heels (because the dress code was ‘business casual’, whatever that was, so she was free to interpret it as she wished), was, as such, in attendance.

While Mary was predominantly there as a personal favour to the current president of the society, she would have been invited regardless as a result of her unelected appointment to the position (designed for her) of 'ancient knower of the things'. The society was technically just for undergrads, but after being first year representative, then treasurer, then president two years in a row, it was thought that it was probably in everyone's best interest to keep her around just in case.

Mary's role that evening was very low effort. She was to show stallholders to their assigned positions, and then float about, talking to them whenever their stalls started to look a bit devoid of students so as to fool them into believing that their attendance was worthwhile. None of it was worthwhile, because networking was just buzz-word-y codswallop, but that was neither here nor there.

And so it happened that she returned to the foyer of the hall they were using, having shown the Defence Forces recruiters (fucking hot, she definitely had a thing for the military) to their table, to overhear Elinor, the current president, an aggressively sensible young lady who had cut her teeth in the debating society before taking over Mechanical, and who had once described Mary’s aesthetic (rather aptly, she had to admit) as ‘lipstick butch’, trying to get someone to follow her to their table.

The person declining to go was obscured from view by the giant standing banner they were carrying, but seeing that it was a banner for ----, ----son, ---- and ----, she was reasonably sure of not only the identity of the person carrying it, but also why they were making life difficult for everyone. Mary pulled her phone out of her back pocket and took a moment, using the screen as a mirror, to check that her lipstick (electric purple, perhaps, but a dark electric purple, which made it more sensible) was present and correct, and that her hair was as well behaved as it could be, given the circumstances. The circumstances being that it was her hair, and it only had one state in which it existed, that state being ‘terrible’. She then stowed her phone and strode towards the discussion, for she was in her ‘Corporate Mary’ heels, which were tall enough to seem authoritative, but still easy to walk in, and which made a delightful clacking noise as she moved, and so striding was the only way to walk.

This was the last thing she needed at this point, but she was there to deal with the problems the undergrads (those who were still standing at least) couldn't handle. And from experience, she knew that this was going to be one of those problems. Studiously ignoring the source of the problem, she told Elinor that one of the speakers from the faculty needed to talk to her (which wasn’t strictly untrue, they just needed to see her before the event started, an hour from then), and waited to see that Elinor was out of earshot before turning to face Henry Crawford (because who else would it have been) and crossing her arms. 

“Did you have to be such a shit to poor Elinor?" she asked after she ascertained that whoever was manning the stall with him wasn’t yet in appearance, looking up at him with some disappointment evident in her visage. “Not all young ladies are as adept at dealing with your bullshit as I am." He was wearing a disgustingly well fitted suit, because of course he was. The shoulders and thighs which years of rowing and rubgy had developed were displayed to excellent advantage. Mary sighed and gestured towards the door to the hall. “If you’ll follow me, I can take you to where you’re setting up." Without waiting for him to follow, Mary set off, knowing that Crawford would not only be more than capable of keeping up, but also that he had attended a number of these events as a student, knew perfectly well how they were run, and was simply being a nuisance because he knew that she was going to be there, and would be sent to liaise with the troublemakers.

Once she had shown him to the stall he was to be schmoozing from, she turned to leave, only to be stopped by a hand on her shoulder, holding her in place. Mary stiffened and crossed her arms again, not at all in the mood for Crawford’s usual nonsense. “You need to wear heels that aren't hidden by a skirt more often." He was looming over her shoulder, which wasn’t difficult, considering the fact that even wearing three and a half inch heels, she still didn’t crack 5’9", and whispering in her ear, his mouth close enough for Mary to feel his breath on her neck. If she hadn’t already tensed up, she probably would have shivered. She could feel the radiant heat flow from his body even through his suit, which, now that she had seen it up close, she would bet her left kidney on being at least 50% cashmere. She couldn’t confirm without feeling it, but her mother had taught her enough about textiles that she could spot what a suit was made of from a few paces.

Mary turned her head to look at him in as disparaging a manner as she could manage. “If you’re quite finished?" she asked wearily. Crawford smirked slightly in reply, and so Mary walked off, entirely aware of his eyes on her retreating form. “It's nice to see you, Mary," he said to her retreating form.

“Why did your boyfriend not just mention that he was waiting for you?" Elinor asked when she and Mary were next standing in the foyer waiting for the company representatives to arrive.

“Not my boyfriend," Mary corrected.

“Sure he isn’t," Elinor said with a concerted roll of her eyes that Mary could hear as well as see. In reply to Mary's sharp look, she continued, “If he’s not in fact your boyfriend, then you guys must have had one hell of a torrid fling in the past, because that was sexual tension the likes of which I haven’t encountered outside of the cover of a Mills and Boon novel. Although that’s good to hear, because he did strike me as a bit of a dick."

“The privilege is strong with that one," Mary agreed.

“That’s not to say he isn’t hot as hell, and that if he were offering, I wouldn’t probably accept." Elinor raised her eyebrows at Mary as if hinting something, before welcoming the people sent by KPMG and showing them in. Mary paused for a moment, considering recent events. And for the first time, she actually allowed a shred of credence to attach itself to Crawford’s eight or so years of half-hearted pursuit. After all, it’s what everyone around her had been doing for years. Of course if there was even the slightest potentiality that Crawford was serious, that meant that Fitzwilliam had been serious (which wasn’t something she ever doubted, she just found it impossible to comprehend), and that meant that Mary had a whole slew of deep-seated anxieties to deal with before that shit could go ahead.

Later in the evening, Mary was prowling the hall, looking for stalls with below-average student engagement. She was sweeping past ---, ----son, ----, and ---- when a hand caught hers, and she found herself being pulled into the corridor leading to the cloakroom. Why there was a cloakroom in a hall at a university, Mary had no idea. And yet, there she was.

“What the fuck, Crawford?" she hissed.

“Something is going on with you. You barely even bothered to glare at me on your way past."

“Your concern is touching," Mary said with acid.

“Tell me that everything is normal if you want, but if you want to go and get coffee and talk once this evening is over, I’ll be around, and in the meantime we can take bets on how many undergrads slip me their phone number tonight."

“Well definitely not now," Mary said after brief consideration. “You know what, fuck it. Sure. I could use someone to talk to."

“Talk at, you mean," Crawford mused.

“Potato, potato," Mary said, not varying the pronunciation of the word when she repeated it. “And I'm not guessing a number, but I'm willing to say that you're going to get more interest from the lads tonight."

“I'm flattered, but I doubt it."

“You're welcome. Now I need to get back out there and make banal chit-chat. Which, now that I think about it, so do you." It was only as they exited the cloakroom, and Elinor gave Mary a smugly disappointed shake of the head, that Mary considered the optics of her exiting a cloakroom with an eligible gentleman.

Crawford had no such qualms, handing Mary a glass of wine as they passed the drinks table. Mary just rolled her eyes and went to go talk to the people from the university's careers centre, perpetually the stall with the least engagement. She soon discovered that they had no good advice for someone with a BE, ME, and a PhD, but no real idea as to what they wanted to do with their life, which was a disappointment, but not really a surprise.

After much schmoozing, the evening ran to its inevitable closure, and Mary was sitting on the floor of the foyer with her phone plugged into one of the power outlets which were always designed into large spaces in order to let the cleaners do their thing. She was halfway through typing a message to Fitzwilliam when she caught herself and forced herself to delete it before it could be accidentally sent. Mary couldn't help but feel that it was telling that after a long and boring evening, when she wanted to talk to someone, he was her unconscious choice.

And so it was that Crawford came across her, staring at an open message thread, drumming her fingers on the ground and hitting her head against the wall behind her, while muttering “idiot, idiot, idiot.".

“Well this seems healthy," Crawford said lightly, offering her a hand up.

Mary ignored that hand, unplugged her phone, coiled the cord, stowed her phone in her back pocket, and stood under her own power. She then retrieved her handbag, dropped her charger into it, and turned to face Crawford. “So we can try to find some place in this godforsaken student-based locale that is open and offers coffee which is actually drinkable,"

“Unlikely," Crawford interjected.

“Or you can come back to my student accommodation and I'll make some tea."

“Leaf or bag?" Crawford asked, holding the door open for Mary.

“Leaf, obviously," Mary answered. “I'm not an animal."

“Lead on, madame,” he invited. “You were right, by the way.”

“About what?”

“I did get more phone numbers from guys tonight.”

“Oh I know,” Mary laughed.

“What?”

“I told them to,” Mary said with a smile. 

Crawford snorted. “You didn’t have anything better to do with your time?” 

“It’s industry night. Of course I didn’t have anything better to do with my time.”

 

When they reached the apartment, Mary went into the kitchen area to make some tea, and ran into the boyfriend of one of her apartment-mates. “John, how nice to see you!” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “Margaret’s taking forever?” 

“I can hear you, you little shit!” Margaret called from her room as her boyfriend, John Thornton smiled slightly and said “Yes.”

Mary took a step back and went to introduce the gentlemen. They pre-empted her.

“Crawford,” Thornton said, with a nod.

“Thornton,” Crawford responded.

“You two know each other?” she asked, surprised.

“We were at school together,” Crawford said as if that were the most obvious thing in the world.

“Jesus, Henry,” said Mary, “is there anyone you didn’t go to school with?”

Thornton snorted. “Margaret asks me the same thing all the time.”

Said lady emerged from her room, called for her boyfriend, and they both left. Crawford leaned against a wall, looking annoyingly comfortable, and said, as Mary set the kettle to boiling, “We can skip the tea, you know.”

Mary considered the fact she didn’t know which of the other girls were going to be about, and the fact that she definitely didn’t want to discuss the fact that she was in the presence of a gentleman, and not the one they were expecting, and agreed. Grabbing him by the elbow, she pulled him in the correct direction.

Once they were in her room, Crawford immediately lounged on her (thankfully made) bed, and Mary took to pacing.

“So you're distracted, and that's unlike you," he commented, “and you're pacing, which is definitely not like you."

“Look, recent events have forced me to reconsider the tenor of our past interactions," Mary said, raking her hair back from her face in a nervous gesture.

Crawford reclined in an even more pointed manner. “I take it Evie finally stopped tiptoeing about and admitted that he wants to love you forever and ever and have lots of adorable little babies with you?" In response to Mary’s look of shock, he explained, “Have you seen how that boy looks at you? I mean when I saw the two of you together at La Traviata it seemed a bit fake, but it got considerably more convincing each subsequent time I saw the two of you together. And to be honest, I'm surprised you let it get that far, because you're far too repressed and/or riddled with insecurities as a result of some kind of... oh, I don't know..." Crawford was waving a hand in the air as he thought aloud, “tragic upbringing, or some such to allow that kind of casual affection in public. Partially because, let's admit, you don't do casual in any aspect of your life."

“You are correct."

“Which makes me think something along the lines of traumatic past. Broken heart? Some childhood cad did you wrong? No. That wouldn't be like you. You're far too practical for that kind of sentimental nonsense."

“Again, you are correct."

“Which leads us to our next option, ugly sibling. Of course," he breathed, when Mary momentarily paused in her pacing. “You never really left behind the fact that you were perhaps a slightly more awkward looking child, and you find it categorically impossible to believe that anyone would be attracted to you, so you aggressively friendzone, or categorically ignore, anyone who tries."

Mary, giving up on pacing, slumped against the door to her room, and slid down until she was hugging her knees.

“To answer your next question, yes, my interest in you was genuine." Crawford’s tone switched from musing to marginally more serious, and he reclined marginally less. “I thought that you disagreed with me on some deep personal level, and that was what was holding you back from receiving my advances."

“That wasn’t entirely off the mark," Mary pointed out, lifting her head from where it had been resting on her arms.

“Oh yes?" Crawford prompted.

“Admittedly, most of my deep-seated personal dislike of you now appears to be misinformed. I thought that you were toying with me for shits and giggles. The rest of it, like the fact that you’re the literal physical incarnation of white male privilege and you seem to revel in it, still stands."

“And the, oh, I believe that my sister refers to it as ‘my wandering dick’ wasn’t an issue?"

Mary shrugged expansively. “I’ve spent enough time around your sister, and indeed you, now that I’ve re-evaluated our acquaintance, to know that you’re nothing if not respectful of choice and consent."

“When on earth did you spend a concerted period of time with my sister?"

“Last night of the Proms," Mary answered. "You know that I do a lot of chorus work."

“You…" Crawford trailed off, clearly doing mental arithmetic. “You did a concert series a week and a half before your submission date?"

Mary snorted in a manner which made it clear that she was insulted. “Oh, yeah, because I need to attend sooooo many rehearsals and spend ages studying the music on my own so that I can sing Jerusalem in unison, Rule Britannia in the most uninspired four part harmony ever devised, and deal with some radical reinterpretation of Pomp and Circumstance because every person who conducts Land of Hope and Glory always interprets it  _ super  _ differently. Because every time I perform Zadok the Priest it’s a wildly different experience."

Crawford shrugged, conceding that she made a relevant point.

“I assume that if I ever categorically told you to fuck off, you would have?" Mary asked, returning to the previous topic of conversation.

“Just so. Indeed the fact that you never did made me think that you were bored and enjoyed the hate flirting a little bit, even if you had no interest in pursuing it."

“I was bored, and I did enjoy the hate flirting. I just didn’t think that you were serious about any of it. Of course, slightly more to the point, I thought that I was aromantic until about three months ago, when suddenly all sorts of feelings and desires started asserting themselves, which was a bloody traumatic awakening, let me tell you, but that’s neither here nor there."

“Is that so?" Crawford sounded intrigued. “I had always thought that you just weren’t interested in me. Or men in general. Not that you were categorically not interested."

“I’m glad that my romantic awakening at age twenty-six is fascinating to you," Mary commented with a hefty sigh.

“You say aromantic," Crawford noted.

“I never thought I was asexual," Mary muttered darkly.

“So if I had just straight up offered a shag…"

“I would still have said no, because as already explained, I thought that you were toying with me for your amusement."

“And being the ugly child, that’s all you could rationalise it as. So at all those various parties and cruises when some rowing, rugby, or cricket boy would try to get it on with you…?"

“So you did orchestrate those. I thought it was mightily unlikely that I was the only warm body breathing in and out left available at that many social events."

“I wanted to see if it was just me you wouldn’t let yourself get involved with. And for the record, every single one of them had asked me if the two of us were an item, and when I assured them that we weren’t, had made overtures of their own volition."

“Fuck directly off," Mary responded flatly. “That is a crock of shit."

“A surprising number of men find strong, authoritative females attractive."

“And somehow, all of those men hail from the upper classes?" Mary enquired, taking stock of the various gentlemen who had expressed interest in her in the past. “Never mind that, actually. I could have been getting some primo dick for the past eight years?"

“Make of that what you will," Crawford said, "all of it was genuine."

Mary slumped her head back down onto her arms, with a loud groan. “Why on earth were you even interested in me?" she asked.

“Are, present tense," he corrected in an off-hand manner.

“I mean seriously, I’ve spent the past eight years being a dick to you, I introduced myself by way of flattening you in a tackle, and when all else is said and done, you’re," she gestured limply in his direction, “and I’m very much…" she waved her hands more expansively, with a slight edge of crazy, encompassing not only herself but also the general chaos that was her room in college.

“Eloquent," Crawford commented, before sighing and leaning forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. “On a point-by-point basis, the fact that you would only give me the time of day under sufferance, let alone anything else, was slightly refreshing. It reminded me a bit of my dear older sister, who has never tolerated any of my nonsense. As for the introduction via contact sports, I deserved it. Not only were we playing a sport where such things are expected, but I was cocky. I thought that being some hotshot rower in school meant that I couldn’t be taken down by five-foot-not-that-much of curves, muscles, and rage, and I soon learned the error in that. It was also, for the record, the only time I have found myself nursing a semi in the middle of a game of rugby. As for your incoherent flailing, a few things. To start with, you’re twenty-six, and while objectively you’re not what the mass media would refer to as the ideal standard of feminine beauty, you carry yourself with poise. Whatever ugly duckling horror your youth happened to be, you grew out of it. And out of curiosity, did you delete all evidence of that? Because I’ve done some pretty considerable social media stalking, on more than one occasion, because I was curious, and I found nothing."

“There are some hardcopy photographs at home," Mary admitted, “but the digital record was scrubbed clean."

“Interesting. Back to my point, you are an intellectually stimulating, sexually attractive woman, and I think it’s wildly unfortunate that you’re so ridiculously filled with insecurities that you are unable to realise that." Mary raised her head from her hands, and saw that Crawford was staring at her in a calculating manner. “Why did you drag me here, by the way?" he asked. “Surely it wasn’t just because you wanted a frank and measured discussion of your various angsts and emotional foibles, and it can’t be because you’ve brought me to your den of iniquity so as to have your wicked way with me, because that just doesn’t seem your style. Which makes me think that Major Big Shiny Hero’s announcement that he’s formed an attachment is somehow different to every other time a man has made overtures in your direction, because suddenly it has you scared, and that makes me think that you think you might actually like him."

“Colonel Big Shiny Hero," Mary corrected. “The promotion came through a couple of weeks ago."

“Good for him!" Crawford commented. “Do pass on my congratulations when you inevitably see him again." 

Mary managed to make raising an eyebrow look malicious, and said, “Maybe I did drag you here for a frank and measured discussion.”

Crawford obliged. “You do like him, don’t you?"

“Honestly, I don’t know. All of the feelings floating around at the moment are entirely new, and still pretty fucking unwelcome, and I haven’t had sufficient time to get used to them to be able to differentiate. If we’re assuming that the feelings I have for Evelyn are me ‘liking’ him, then it follows that apparently, I like you to some not inconsiderable extent."

At this, Crawford grinned and snorted slightly. “What you feel for me, I can almost guarantee, is mostly sexual attraction."

“Oh thank god. I can ignore that. We would never work." Mary seemed to be trying to convince herself more than anything else.

“A relationship would never work, certainly," Crawford specified.

“Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?"

“If you think I’m suggesting that we do various things which can’t be shown on television before the watershed, then yes, that would indeed be the case."

Mary paused for a moment, pondering the implications of that statement. And then pondering the implications of previous statements. “I’m going to say a whole bunch of stuff out loud, and I’m going to need your opinions and suggestions as I go."

“Speaking of the hot mess that is your life, how’s the PhD going?" Crawford asked innocuously.

“Fuck you very much," Mary commented, before stretching her legs out in front of her and staring at the ceiling. “It’s been submitted, and I defend it in two days, and then I’m done. I probably ought to be packing, but I’ve lived here for close to nine years now, and I’m attached to the place, so I’m holding off until I absolutely have to." She wiggled her toes for a moment before getting back on point. “If what I feel for you is predominantly sexual attraction, then there’s a definite streak of that in my feelings for Evelyn."

“I’d fucking hope so, otherwise that’s going to be a rather chaste relationship," Crawford laughed.

“That’s not a problem per se, but an unfortunate side effect of my complete inability to believe that anyone was actually attracted to me, coupled with my longstanding belief that I just wasn’t that interested in relationships does mean that past the occasional sloppy necking while an undergrad, I haven’t actually… you know… done the sex, as it were, and that’s a bloody daunting prospect."

“Some questions," Crawford interjected, “I thought you said that you never thought you were asexual. Even if you weren’t interested in relationships, we’ve already established the fact that you had multiple opportunities with various well-bred and rather willing young athletes."

“I am a lady," Mary scoffed. In response to Crawford’s muttered ‘bullshit’, she explained, “I didn’t know that they were genuinely  interested in me at the time, and even so, I had no interest in engaging in sexual relations with some meathead with whom I had just become acquainted. I did, and indeed still do, own a personal relaxation tool or several. Oh don’t give me that look. Every woman does, and the ones who say that they don’t are lying."

“Secondly," Crawford continued, “it is a damn shame that you haven’t spent the past several years engaged in a series of torrid flings with ne’er-do-wells and rakes, because you’d probably be in a much healthier place now, emotionally, had that been the case. Finally, please tell me that you don’t subscribe to the pernicious virginity myth perpetuated by society which says that you will forever have some special connexion to whichever swain happens to first penetrate your garden of earthly delights with his blood sausage. Tell me that that isn’t the root of your issues with any thought of pending intimacy between you and the good Colonel."

Mary took a moment to tamp down the fit of the giggles which Crawford’s description of vaginal penetrative intercourse had awoken in her. “Never fear, that is not the case. I don’t see why the involvement of another human being in the general vicinity of my nether regions is any different from some of the other things which have been involved with them over the years. I’m just…" she cast about for an adequate way to describe her issues, which even to her, were fuzzy at best most of the time. “I tend to get nervous and overthink things when they’re new to me. Sex, to me, is like driving a bus. I’m aware of the fact that a lot of people do it, and I’m sure that if push came to shove, I’d manage, but that wouldn’t stop me from feeling particularly nervous the first time I actually did it."

Henry Crawford steepled his fingers in front of his face and gazed at Mary over them. “Your inexperience in this issue makes you nervous, because you don’t like to be at a disadvantage in personal situations," he observed. “I think it might be time for me to call your attention back to what I was suggesting earlier. No, no, no." He held up a finger when Mary drew breath to speak. “Before you say anything, here’s my reasoning. I’m willing and available, and honestly, I’ve been trying to get a chance to have sex with you for about eight years, so, it’d be nice. You’re freaking out because you haven’t become structurally involved with anyone, and your inexperience makes you nervous. You want to go into whatever thing you could have with Colonel Too Attractive For His Own Good without the encumbrances of your neuroses, and I honestly think that a good shag with someone who isn’t a stranger, but with whom you see absolutely no romantic future, would probably help with that. And, as you said yourself, why should this be any different from some of the other things which have become acquainted with your nether regions?"

This gave Mary pause. He made a very convincing point. She was nervous about trying something new, and here was someone who had listened to her problems, given surprisingly not that bad advice, and who was willing to perform exactly the service which she hadn’t even known she had required. As she thought, she drew her knees back up to her chest and drummed her fingers on her knees. Eventually, she said, “You make a very good point. I’m in. Let’s do this." Crawford raised his eyebrows in mild surprise, a slow smile creeping its way across his face. “Although you’re going to have to give me a hand getting up," Mary continued, “my legs have fallen asleep."

Crawford stood, crossing the tiny room to where she was sitting, and offered her his hands, pulling her upright. He then took an immediate step forwards, which meant that Mary had to take a step backwards, and found herself with her back against the door to her room, with Crawford standing very close to her indeed. He was looking down at her (which wasn’t surprising given that he toed the line between strapping and rangy, and she was barefoot, and so without her usual advantage of prosthetic height), and something in the way he was looking at her gave Mary a bit of a panic response, with both her heartrate and breathing picking up. They stood there for a number of seconds, Mary frozen like a rabbit caught in oncoming headlights, and Crawford content to loom, before he leaned down and murmured, “You’re going to want to take off your lipstick, or this is about to get incredibly messy."

“Fuck, Crawford," Mary slumped in the only direction available, forward, ending with her head resting on Crawford’s chest, just below his shoulder. “Were the theatrics necessary?" She shoved him out of the way with her hip and went to her desk, which still had various makeup products strewn over it, grabbed a makeup wipe and a small mirror, and got to it.

“Having seen how you reacted," Crawford moved to stand behind her and braced his forearms on the back of Mary’s desk chair, one hand trailing lightly over the back of her neck, causing an involuntary shiver to run through Mary, “yes, the theatrics were entirely necessary."

“Alright, I’m done. Let’s do this." Mary spun her chair around, and was surprised to find that Crawford kept his hand on the back of her neck and braced his other arm against the desk behind her, effectively trapping her in place.

The hand at the back of Mary’s neck began to make its way upwards, fingers twining through her hair as it went. “There are some things which do need to be sorted out first," he said as his free hand disentangled itself from her hair, fingers now tracing along her jaw. Mary swallowed, and Crawford, who had clearly felt the movement of the muscles in her throat, smiled in a predatory manner. “Do you have condoms?" he enquired as his hand slid down her neck, catching momentarily on the string of pearls which was her go-to necklace whenever she needed to look reasonably professional. He spun the chair back around to face the desk, and Mary lifted her hair out of the way so that he could undo it.

“Oh. No," she admitted. “Do you?"

“I’m not so much of a bounder that I carry a few around at all times just in case," he pointed out, succeeding at operating the clasp and laying the necklace on an empty spot on the desk.

Mary took this as an opportunity to stand, and faced Crawford, pushing the hair off her face yet again, getting annoyed, and reaching for a hair tie. “I wasn’t implying that you were, I just don’t know how these sorts of arrangements work," she explained, tying her hair in a messy ponytail. She missed a few curls at the back, but her eyes were unencumbered, so she wasn’t irritated enough to make an effort to contain them. “I was kind of hoping you had some on you so that I didn’t have to ask one of the other girls. This is going to provoke so much gossip," she groaned, squaring her shoulders and turning towards the door.

“Now hold on a second, Mary." Her progress was halted by Crawford’s hand on her arm, and he took a step closer, eyes raking over Mary as the panic response kicked in again, his hand going to play with one of the tendrils of hair which had escaped her ministrations. Mary looked up at him, and he leaned in, voice dropping in pitch. “If you’re going to provoke gossip, why don’t we give them something to really talk about?" he suggested.

Before Mary could think of a response, let alone articulate it, Mary found herself pressed against the wall by the length of Crawford’s body. She had just enough time to draw in a shaky and altogether ineffectual breath before his lips were on hers. Mary had been hoping that when push came to shove, her lizard brain would take over, and biological instinct would kick in, because that’s what the majority of popular fiction intimated would happen. She was sorely disappointed. Luckily, popular fiction had at least given her a decent understanding of what she probably ought to be doing, so she went with that. Crawford broke off the kiss with a chuckle. “Mary, you’re thinking too much," he pointed out.

“What am I doing?" Mary asked.

“What are you doing as in you’re beginning to question whether you want to go through with this, or what are you doing as in actually what are you doing?"

“Pop culture told me that this would be all instinctual and shit. It’s not. I have literally no idea what I’m meant to be doing."

“So I should stop being respectful and evolved and waiting for you to steer the course of things and just take control of the situation?" Crawford’s eyes darkened, and Mary felt a quivering deep inside her with which she was well acquainted, but which had never surfaced merely in response to the way someone was looking at her.

“If you..." Mary’s voice emerged as little more than a squeak. She took a cleared her throat and tried again. “If you wouldn’t mind, that would be super."

“Right." The word was barely more than a rumble in his chest, and Mary found her arms being draped over his shoulders, “You’re going to need the help boosting your height," he explained, placing one hand on the small of her back, pulling him even tighter against him as he pressed her into the wall. “Don’t worry about tongue or anything else. Just stay put and try not to overthink." His other hand went to the back of her head, using it to steer her mouth when he once again pressed his lips to hers.

He was right. She did need the extra help boosting her height. Her neck was beginning to protest being craned up for quite so long, and so she raised herself onto her toes, appreciating the fact that being pinned to the wall made balancing easy. After a time, it could have been seconds, it could have been hours, Mary didn’t know, he broke off the kiss yet again, leaving Mary gasping for air, moving his attentions down her neck to her collarbone. Crawford moved his hands to the backs of her legs. “Hold onto my shoulders and jump," he instructed, lifting her legs and wrapping them around his hips when she did, before slamming her against the wall once again. This time, the change in position meant that the pressure of his body against hers caused the vague quivering to spike unexpectedly. Mary, much to her shame, whimpered slightly, and then blushed furiously. Crawford, who had hoisted her up such that she was more or less of a height with him, looked up from his perusal of the neckline of her blouse with a slightly feral grin. Keeping deliberate eye contact, he ground his hips against hers, and Mary’s breathing hitched, and feeling betrayed by the fact that her lizard brain had decided to cede control without removing the rational brain’s ability to observe what it was doing, she blushed even deeper. Crawford’s eyes dropped to her cleavage. “You know, Mary," his voice was silky smooth as he ground his hips into hers again, and Mary managed not to react past a slight tightening of her legs, which he undoubtedly noticed, but was good enough to forebear mentioning, “I’m beginning to wonder if that blush goes all the way down."

He stepped away from the wall, which Mary took as her cue to unwrap her legs from his person, only to find that she had lost most of her control over her knees, which seemed to have turned to fluid. She stumbled slightly, kept upright by Crawford’s hands going to her elbows until she righted herself. Once she straightened, he reached behind her and untied her hair, tousling it quickly before wrapping one hand around the side of her ribs and brushing a thumb over her nipple. Which got neither of them anywhere, because Mary was not the sort of woman who could wear lace bras on a regular basis, because they just weren’t up to corralling the funbags if she needed to do anything more strenuous than sit still and look pretty. Crawford pulled the neckline of her shirt away from her still slightly heaving bosom and took a peek. “Huh," he noted. “A sensible bra. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Still," he said, looking her over, “now you’re ready to incite gossip."

Mary made her way out into the hallway, leaving her door slightly ajar, but mostly closed, and knocked on the door across from hers, hoping that it was occupied. It was. The door opened, and the girl inside looked Mary up and down, taking in mussed appearance, fading blush, and still slightly higher than average respiration rate, and leaned against the doorframe. “Mary," she drawled, “what can I do for you on this fine evening."

"Cynth, umm, I know that this is an awkward ask, but…" Mary could feel the blush restarting, "you wouldn’t happen to have any condoms would you?"

Cynthia gasped and pulled Mary into her room, shutting the door behind them. “Tell me that the fuckboy has finally realised that you are the best thing to happen to him.”

“Not quite,” Mary prevaricated. 

“Interesting. You’re welcome to the stash, of course, given that I just nick them periodically from the campus clinic, but you’re going to have to give me some details. So it’s not the fuckboy.”

“It’s not  _ the _ fuckboy,” Mary confirmed, “but it’s almost certainly  _ a _ fuckboy.”

“Is it someone I know?” Cynthia asked in a calculating manner. She had met the majority of the other PhD students at one time or another, because they were more or less the only people with whom she spent any serious amounts of time while around campus, and she was clearly trying to ascertain if it was one of them. Suddenly she gasped. “Oh my god, is it Nikandros? Has the fic come true?”

“What fic?” Mary asked.

“Answer the goddamn question,” Cynthia insisted.

“No it is not. Nor will it ever be. What fic?”

Cynthia blinked for a second. “Nothing. Unimportant. Later. When you don’t have some gentleman in your quarters.  Can I see, or is he, shall we say…" her voice dropped and there was a hint of laughter in it, “not fit for polite company right now?"

“He’s perfectly respectable."

“For now, and not for long, I should hope," Cynthia said with a wink.

Mary took a deep breath to fortify herself and reopened the door to Cynthia’s room. “Henry, if you could pop your head out for a moment and look attractive, I’d really appreciate it."

Crawford did as requested, leaning against the doorframe of Mary’s room and nodding in Cynthia’s direction. “Hi."

“Hello there!" Cynthia enthused, turning back to Mary. “Ohmigod. Nice. One sec." She handed Mary a giant ornamental vase filled with condoms which, as she had said, had clearly been nicked from the campus clinic. Mary gave her a pained expression, because it was a truly laughable volume of prophylaxis. “Just return the vase when you’re done. Wow. Have fun, Mary."

“Oh, she’s already had some fun," Crawford commented with a wink.

Cynthia squealed and pulled Mary in for a private word. “Please tell me that you’re not wearing a comfortable, supportive bra right now," she whispered. 

“I cannot tell you that, because you know me,” Mary pointed out. “It’s definitely towards the nicer end of the collection, but it’s definitely not some frothy confection.”

“Whatever,” Cynthia sighed. “It’s not going to make that much of a difference. Have fun, and we’ll talk later.”

“We certainly will,” said Mary, filing away a reminder to ask about the fic that Cynthia had mentioned. Cynthia then gave her a push into the hallway and after a very significant look, closed the door behind her.

With a wry look at the vase in Mary’s hands, Crawford moved to let her pass, divested her of the condom vase, and closed the door. “I am flattered by your friend’s regard for my stamina,” he commented, causing Mary to blush anew. Crawford followed the progression  of colour down her neck and décolletage with some interest. “And honestly, I am loving the horrified blushing,” he said with a smile, playing with the top button of her blouse. “It makes me wonder how,” he leaned in so that his lips were practically touching her ear as he spoke, “responsive you might really be.” Mary’s breath hitched and Crawford chuckled, his hands making their way under the hem of her shirt and to her sides, slowly moving upwards.

Mary removed his tie, and started unbuttoning his shirt. She untucked it and pushed it off his shoulders, at which point Crawford withdrew his hands and went to deal with his cufflinks, before shrugging off the shirt. Mary looked up at Crawford as she tugged his undershirt out of his trousers. “I’m going to need your help getting this over your head,” she commented. Crawford obliged, and Mary was content just to stare at him for a while. Genetics had been kind, and what nature hadn’t done for him, a decade or so of rowing had. Mary ran an exploratory hand across his jaw, down the side of his neck, and over one of his shoulders, enjoying the feeling of the muscles shifting slightly under her fingers. 

Crawford started unbuttoning her shirt, his fingers brushing her chest as she did. Once her shirt was also off, he ran his hands over the tops of her breasts, and Mary could feel the goosebumps rising as he did. “Is there any possibility we could move to a slightly more horizontal location?” he asked. “Because honestly, you are just too short.”

“I am of average height for a woman,” she countered, crossing her arms, and then uncrossing them as his eyes went straight to the cleavage that created.

“Believe that if you will, but the extent to which I need to bend down in order to do anything begs to differ.”

Mary rolled her eyes and made the decision to save some time later, and undid her bra, stretching for a moment once it was off before pulling on the t-shirt she was using as a pyjama top. She was conscious of Crawford’s eyes on her as she did. “Was that for my benefit?” Crawford asked, as she turned back to face him. There was some clear evidence of his interest becoming evident.

“Not entirely,” she admitted, because she had been partially motivated by the fact that she had had a long day and was ready to take her bra off. “But you’re welcome,” Mary said, undoing his belt and sliding it out of the loops. His trousers dropped infinitesimally on his hips. Mary skimmed her fingertips along the skin just above the waistband and Crawford flinched. “Are you ticklish?" she asked, delighted, running her nails up his sides.

Crawford squirmed out of reach and crossed his arms. “Could you not?" he asked with a hint of petulance.

“Not fucking likely," Mary said, taking a step forward.

“Seriously, Mary." Crawford was starting to sound desperate.

“Fine,” Mary said, “but that is both hilarious and adorable.” She sat primly on the edge of her bed. Crawford approached, and she scooted back, leaving him room. Crawford joined her and kissed her thoroughly, his hands making use of the fact that she was no longer wearing a very sensible bra. Mary had no complaints. She got to keep running her hands over his chest, with its light covering of hair, firm muscles, and warm skin. Not for the first time, she wondered why she hadn’t gone for this sooner.

After a while, Crawford moved so that his head was at the join of her neck and her shoulder. “Hickeys?" he asked.

“If you can make it look like something I could have picked up in a scrum, then be my guest. God knows it wouldn’t be the first time."

“Really?” he enquired, one hand stroking down her neck.

“Honestly the number of times I’ve taken an elbow to the neck in a scrum and then spent a week having people ask me who’s the new boyfriend."

Crawford chuckled. “That I can work with." Instead of working with that, however, Crawford kissed Mary again. She couldn’t help but feel that she was getting the hang of it, which was a win in and of itself. Crawford shifted back and undid the waistband of Mary’s jeans, and slipped a had inside. Mary put all of her focus into remembering to breathe. She was only slightly successful. “You are so fucking wet," Crawford breathed.

Mary grimaced and put a hand on his chest. “Dirty talk is a hard no from me. Keep it to polite conversation or do not engage." Crawford removed his hand.

“That was barely even--"

“Did I fucking stutter?" Mary asked as she pushed herself up on her elbows and looked at him, eyebrows raised in challenge.

Crawford rolled his eyes. “Well I suppose while we’re here, we may as well get these off," he said, taking hold of the waistband of her jeans. He managed to get them as far as her knees before he paused, looked over at Mary, his gaze full of suspicion and betrayal. “Why won’t they move?"

Mary flopped an arm over her face and laughed helplessly. “They’re skinny jeans, and I have massive calves. They don’t just slide off." She pushed Crawford off of her, and swung her legs over the side of the bed so that she could actually remove her jeans. “Has this literally never happened to you before?" Mary asked as she pulled her jeans off.

“No it has not,” Crawford commented as she folded her jeans and draped them over the back of a chair.

Mary looked at the barely clad, unpleasantly good looking guy stretched out on her bed, and had an attack of the nerves. “Are you alright?” he asked, sitting up.

“I’m fine,” she replied automatically.

“You don’t seem fine,” he pointed out. “I never thought that I’d need to have a conversation with you about active and enthusiastic consent, but your consent is starting to look significantly less enthusiastic. 

“Henry, please stop being such a nice guy. I’m a bit new to the whole horizontal naked tango thing. I’d be showing a panic response the first time I drove a bus, having mainly formed my opinions of the art from fanfiction." Mary was pacing about her room in nothing but her underwear, and was beginning to feel like a bit of an idiot. She turned to face Crawford. “The fact that I am apparently not even a power bottom but apparently a bit of a pillow princess is starting to make itself terribly evident, so I’m having trouble talking myself into things, and I just need to work within that."

She was standing there wearing next to nothing, her arms crossed over her chest because even some mild pacing was resulting in more jiggling than she was a fan of, when Crawford snorted, walked towards her, and wrapped his arms around her in what felt like an almost platonic gesture. “Mary, I want you to promise me that you won’t mention public transportation the next time you’re in any situation which could be even remotely construed as sexual."

“Is it killing the mood?" Mary enquired mildly, uncrossing her arms and running her fingers idly through his hair, which was annoyingly soft. Her hair felt nowhere near that nice, and she knew for a fact that she put significant effort into hers.

“Only slightly," he admitted, his arms moving down Mary’s back to rest at her waist. Mary removed her hands from his hair and went to undo the button on his trousers, which fell to reveal his now definite erection, constrained only by his boxer briefs. 

Mary slid a hand down his midsection, from pectorals, down past abdominals, and then continued down into his underwear for an exploratory feel. She was surprised when he hissed and flinched. “What?” she asked, not removing her hand.

“Your hand is very cold,” he said, trying not to laugh.

“And this is only just now becoming evident?”

“Some areas are more sensitive than others,” Crawford countered.

Mary shifted her hand experimentally, and when she received no protest, continued. This, at least, was an activity where she could be as academic as she wanted and it was in no way a problem. When his underwear were becoming a bit too much of an encumbrance, she decided that there was no time like the present, and withdrew her hand, reaching for one of the condoms. Crawford got a fraction of the way through a question, probably about what she was doing, when she silenced him with a look.

Very deliberately, she pulled down his underwear, until at length, his phallus sprung free in a manner which was faintly comical. What was not faintly comical, however, was the size of the thing. Some of Crawford’s unflinching self-confidence started to really make sense. Crawford caught her staring and quirked an eyebrow. “Don’t be smug,” Mary admonished, tearing open the condom wrapper and accidentally tearing the condom itself. With a roll of the eyes, she dropped it in the bin next to her desk, and tried again to greater success.

She rolled it onto him with technique which would have made her high school sex ed teacher proud, and dropped to her knees.

“Are y--”

“Please stop talking,” Mary said mildly, before diving in. The latex taste was definitely unpleasant, but the manner in which Crawford had to brace himself against the wall in front of him and was occasionally swearing softly was rather gratifying.

After not an exceedingly long time, Mary could feel Crawford tensing up. “Mary, I’m” he was cut off by Mary taking one of her hands from where she was rather enjoying exploring the muscles of his posterior chain, and holding a finger up to stop him. Then she relaxed her jaw and throat muscles (a handy skill picked up over a decade or so of choir) and took him in deeper. Crawford hissed and she heard the thud of a fist hitting the wall above her head. Mary smiled, pulled her head back, running her tongue over the head, and then went deep again. This time, Crawford’s hips bucked forwards slightly as she did. Mary pulled back once more, and with deliberate eye contact, went all the way down again. Crawford shuddered, and his hips bucked into her as Mary felt the strange sensation of the reservoir tip of a condom filling up against the back of her throat. She drew her mouth off him fully, gave him a slap on the backside and stood, leaning against the wall with no small feeling of accomplishment, crossing her arms loosely over her chest and looking up at Crawford, whose hands still hadn’t moved from the wall and were now either side of her head. 

He was breathing hard and seemed to be looking at Mary with great suspicion. He disposed of the condom and pulled his underwear back on, before narrowing his eyes in her direction. “Where the fuck did you learn how to do that?” he asked.

Mary shrugged and broke into a grin. “I read a  _ lot _ of very explicit gay fanfiction when I was younger. It would appear that some of it was based in fact.”

Crawford snorted, and then took a step forward, crowding Mary against the wall. He took hold of her shoulders and steered her towards the bed. Mary flicked her eyes down to his crotch and back up. Crawford pushed her down onto the bed and then climbed on so that he was hovering above her. “I guarantee,” he said, tugging the hem of her t-shirt upwards with the hand that he wasn’t leaning on, “that I can keep you occupied in the interim,” he said, pulling the shirt over her head, and idly tweaking one of her nipples.

He leaned down and mouthed at her other breast, gradually making his way down her body, with the odd scrape of teeth that made her shiver. When he started getting a bit too low for comfort, Mary pulled his head back up to hers. “Full disclosure, the thought of someone giving me head seriously squicks me out,” she said in response to his questioning look.

“What is squick?” he asked.

Mary cast around for a way to articulate the meaning of a word which had been developed to describe a feeling which was hard to articulate. “A deep seated ickiness. Something that you’re not into to the extent that it weirds you out. It’s like the opposite of a kink.” Mary flopped her head back onto the pillow in defeat. “It’s not an easy thing to explain.”

Crawford was kissing along her jaw and down her neck. “Up to you,” Crawford murmured, slipping a hand into her underwear. Mary’s traitor body rose up to meet his hand. Mary was absolutely mortified. Crawford just chuckled, pushed down her shoulder where she had sat up slightly, and left his hand there, holding her in place. “Could you please just lie back and enjoy this?” he asked mildly, and without waiting for a response, returned to his oral explanation of her upper body as digitally, he ventured further.

Mary was actively impressed by how quickly he brought her to orgasm. By the third time, she was beginning to think that she should have put a towel down. She didn’t fail to notice the fact that he was fingering her in a manner clearly designed to stretch the opening slightly, which considering the kraken he was packing, was probably for the best.

As he gave her a moment to recover, and looked down at her neck in a way that made her think that questions were almost certainly going to be asked, she glanced down and saw that he was beginning to show signs of renewed interest. “Shall we…” she looked down again and raised an eyebrow significantly.

“If you want,” Crawford said blithely. “I’m rather enjoying watching you try not to make it blindingly obvious that you like being held down.”

Mary went bright red. “I thought I was doing well,” she groaned, covering her face with her hands. 

In an instant, Crawford was on top of her, her legs pinned between his knees, and he took her hands and held them on the bed next to her. She struggled experimentally, but he only held her down more firmly. “Mary, I am significantly taller and stronger than you," he pointed out.

“That was also the case during that rugby game," she countered.

“Yes, but back then I didn’t really know how much of a pocket rocket you were. I have learned."

Mary didn’t breathe, and honestly thought that she was going to orgasm then and there. Crawford rolled his hips slightly and her breath stuttered. “Well then,” Crawford said wickedly, rolling his hips again as Mary’s back arched off the bed. Mary was slightly shocked. Until then, she had thought that it was only possible to say things ‘wickedly’ in romance novels and poorly written fanfiction smut scenes. Crawford’s predatory grin was back. He climbed off her, releasing her hands at last. “Stay put,” he instructed, dealing with the necessary prophylactics while Mary observed his form.

He returned to Mary and slid his hands down her sides to rest at the top of her underwear. “I am going to need some enthusiastic and continued consent for us to continue,” he said.

Mary raised herself up onto her elbows and gave him a disparaging look. “If my consent is revoked at any point, Henry, you’ll hear about it. Don’t you worry.”

With that, he removed her underwear, positioned himself, and began to slowly sink into her, pinning her arms above her head as almost an afterthought. Mary was grateful for his gradual progress because despite his earlier prep work, it was almost painful. Or more correctly, it was almost too painful for it to feel good at the same time. 

When Crawford was fully in, he closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes and seemed about to say something, Mary cut him off. “If you so much as think about saying anything about how tight I am, or how good I feel, or literally anything else along those lines, I will actually murder you right here and now.” Her voice was perhaps a bit too much of a breathy squeak to sound authoritative, or indeed remotely threatening, but it needed to be said.

Crawford burst into laughter, his entire body shaking with it. This uncontrollable laughter continued for long enough for Mary to have time to consider how ridiculous her position was at that moment. when he finally regained enough control to talk, albeit in a choked wheeze which threatened to dissolve back into laughter at any moment, he said, “I was going to check that you weren’t uncomfortable.” He giggled, and Mary did her best to look stern while naked and spread-eagled. “I see I needn’t have been concerned,” he continued, still shaking with suppressed laughter.

“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” Mary said drily. “Feeling like a bit of a a tit given that the grown man who is CURRENTLY INSIDE ME is pinning me to a bed whilst laughing so hard that he can barely breathe.” That set him off on another round of sniggering, but at least he had the presence to move about a bit while he laughed. 

Mary was starting to realise that there was a significant difference between the feeling of a marital aid and an organ of matrimonial necessity. As Crawford continued to thrust in and out, and managed to stop laughing, although he was studiously avoiding eye contact, because that would just set him off again, she began to get the feeling that he was being deliberately gentle with her. “Henry,” she asked idly, “are you holding back?”

“Why?” he asked, essentially answering her question.

“Remember when I said that you should probably take charge here?”

Crawford’s eyes snapped up to meet hers, and there was not even a hint of laughter. Mary raised her eyebrows in invitation, and Crawford slammed into her, making her back arch off the bed again. He drew out and then slammed into her again, each thrust pulling a gasp out of Mary. She was writhing (as much as she was capable) uncontrollably by the time she orgasmed yet again, her eyes squeezed shut and barely able to breathe. Crawford released her hands and brought his to either side of her shoulders, his head bent as he continued to drive into her. With a few more thrusts he came, and rolled off to lie beside Mary, who was still quivering with the occasional aftershock. 

Mary moved one of her hands to idly play with his hair. “Wow,” she said after a while. “That was bloody good. I cannot believe that I missed out on eight years of this.”

“I’ll admit that in first year I was nowhere near as good as I am now,” Crawford commented. 

“You were still hot though,” Mary replied, “and I wouldn’t have known the difference.” She kissed him on the cheek. “This was really fun. Thanks.”

Crawford looked down at her. “This doesn’t have to just be a one off,” he pointed out.

Mary sighed, playing with one of his curls. “I know, but unfortunately somewhere along the line I got all attached to this guy, and I want to see how things work out with him. If it doesn’t end up working out with him, though, you are going to be the first person I call.”

Crawford sighed. “It will work out, The two of you are bloody perfect for each other.” He pulled Mary to lie against his chest, absently tracing patterns along the top of her shoulder. Mary had nothing to say to that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a wild fucking ride. 
> 
> Hit me up on tumblr :)


	8. A Resolution... for now.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want it to be known that the scenes which take place the night of Chapter 7 were written months before Chapter 7 was finished. It was only after the comments came in that I read it and thought to myself that clearly I was psychic.

Crawford shifted with a groan. “As absolutely beastly as it would be to love you and leave you, as it very much were, your bed is absolutely atrocious, and I am no longer as young as I was, so I shall take my leave of you.”

“I weep, I yearn, I pine already,” Mary replied in as flat a voice as she could manage.

Crawford snorted as he climbed off the bed, retrieving his clothing and reattiring himself. Mary sat up and pulled on her pyjamas. Suitably dressed, she too got up, and leaned against her desk while Crawford made a futile attempt at redoing his tie before giving up and placing it in his jacket pocket, and instead working on putting his shoes back on.

“I assume we’re never going to speak of this little indiscretion ever again,” Crawford commented with a hint of a smile.

“I rather trust your discretion,” Mary replied. “I for one will doubtless occasionally reminisce on this scandalous relation with a rake.”

“I’m flattered?”

“You should be.”

Crawford stood, as dressed as he was ever going to be, and inclined his head in her direction. “If things don’t work out with the Viscount Unfairly Eligible Bachelor, do let me know. I think that we’d have an excellent time being wildly unsuitable for each other.”

“I have no doubt that we would,” Mary agreed, walking him to the door. Reaching up to his shoulders, she gave him a peck on the cheek. “Thanks for tonight. I had a great time.”

Crawford placed one hand at the back of Mary’s head and another at the small of her back, pulling her against him, and kissed her thoroughly once more. He broke the kiss with an excessively wicked smile. “As did I, my dear. As did I.”

He then swept from the room, humming a jaunty tune. Not half a minute later, there was a frantic knocking on her door. Mary opened it to see a very excited looking Cynthia. “Were you listening at your door, waiting for him to leave?” Mary asked.

“That is obviously exactly what I was doing,” Cynthia said, looking about the room with a keen eye, evidently approving of what she found, for she tidied the quilt on Mary’s bed and hopped onto it, sitting cross-legged against the wall. “Tell me everything. You seemed to be keeping rather quiet, but that certainly isn’t indicative of anything. Come, come! I must have details.” Mary, much to her continued horror, blushed for the umpteenth time that night. “That good, was it?” Cynthia enthused, not waiting for an answer before continuing, “No. Change of plans. Have a shower, which I have no doubt you now feel that you could use, I will make a pot of tea, and we are going to have a very detailed discussion.”

Mary grabbed her towel and various other necessities, and Cynthia followed her to the door. “I’ll be quick,” Mary assured her on her way out. “Because I too have some questions.” Cynthia looked a mite uncomfortable, which answered a number of the questions Mary had for her in and of themselves.

Having showered, and feeling much more ready for mutual interrogation, she knocked on the door to Cynthia’s room, holding the condom vase.

“Are you sure you don’t want to keep some of them?” Cynthia asked innocuously. “For future liaisons?”

“I’m moving out three days hence,” Mary reminded her, handing back the vase, “and I shall be exceedingly surprised if I have need of them again before then.”

When they were both seated on Cynthia’s bed, mugs of tea in hand, Mary looked over at Cynthia and politely enquired, “So what was that about RPF? Because when I said that I was about to have carnal relations with a man, you seemed rather swiftly to jump to a number of conclusions, one of which was Nikandros. Why is that?”

Cynthia reached for her laptop and navigated to a dreamwidth account, and clicked on the most recent post. “I stumbled upon this entirely by chance. Someone’s Tumblr had a post about Dreamwidth, so I went over to check it out, clicked on random page, and this was the third one that showed up. I would have kept clicking, but I recognised the name Nikandros, so I started reading. Apparently one of your students has been rather shipping you and him.”

“Holy fuck,” Mary breathed as she read.

“So I take it that you and Nikandros were never an item?” Cynthia asked.

“No.”

“And you’re never likely to be an item?”

“No.”

“Huh. Because he’s hotter than hell and I want to lick his chest.”

“Me too!” agreed Mary. “It just seems so lickable. Small issue, he’s too afraid of disappointing the doyennes of his family to ever date anyone who isn’t Greek. Got any Greek in you?”

“A solid quarter or so. Not enough for good eyebrows, but enough for aggressive leg and moustache hair. My mother’s mother, it turns out, was a postwar migrant. Mama regards it as a point of great shame, and never really mentioned it.”

Mary shrugged. “It’s better than nothing. He’ll be helping me move out, so make yourself visible, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Yeeeessssss! I’m gonna lick his chest!”

“You’re weird, Cynth.”

“That’s what Molly tells me regularly. I’m unfussed.”

“How long have they been uploading this?” Mary had been responding more or less on autopilot, because she had just reached a rather graphic, not to mention poorly written, sex scene, which was, nonetheless, rather compelling. Possibly because she was the subject of it.

“First post was pretty early last semester, and there’s been an update or two each week since. Even during holidays and exams.”

Mary’s eyes, having reached a particularly egregious passage, widened. “Where are they getting this shit?”

“Their imaginations, evidently.”

Mary clicked through to an earlier update and scanned through it. “That happened in a lab I was demonstrating!” She kept reading. A few sentences later, “That happened in a tute a few weeks ago! The little fuckers are in my classes!”

“Mary, we can have time for your righteous outrage later. Right now, I want to talk about your recent sexual encounter with a chap who seemed wildly attractive, morally fluid, and – and I’m spitballing hopefully here – ever so slightly depraved. How and why and what brought this on? Tell me everything.”

“So remember last sem, when I offered you a free ticket to the opera, but you were busy? Well, everyone was busy. So Lizzie said she’d go, barring some massive political scandal. And what do you know, there was a massive political scandal.”

“Oh yes! That was the night that UKIP imploded.”

“So Lizzie couldn’t go, but she promised to rustle up a substitute, whom she described as something along the lines of ‘a strapping young lad who was unlikely to complain’. What was delivered was a gorgeous early-thirties veteran of the army, who at the time held the rank of Major, but whose continued work with cadets has seen him promoted to Colonel in the interim, _and_ , as it turns out, is next in line to an Earldom, and styled a Viscount.”

“Fuck off, Mary, you’re joking. I thought he was just some hot guy you met at some place.”

“Do I look,” Mary asked, with unwavering eye contact, “like I’m joking?” She sighed. “Anyway, he was charming and funny and engaging the entire night, and we became rather good friends. We met for coffee and chats once or twice a week, which you knew, it turned out that his older brother was good friends with Jane’s now sister-in-law, so I saw him occasionally during the wedding prep for one reason or another, and anyway, it turns out that he didn’t just see us as good friends, as I had initially thought, but in fact rather liked me, and _apparently_ , he would like to try entering into a relationship with me.”

“So on the one hand, I am delighted,” Cynthia began, “but on the other hand, I’m not sure if this actually removes him from fuckboy territory. Who dumps that on someone. If you didn’t have such a crush on him, it would smack of some #NiceGuy trying to claw his way out of the friendzone.”

“It’s a bloody confusing thing. Although a lot of people were heavily implying it for weeks before Evie finally got around to telling me, so maybe it wasn’t that out of the blue. Apparently, I’ve been allowing some crippling social anxieties from my awkward youth to blind me to the fact that I’m allegedly rather alluring to a certain class of lunatic,” Mary sounded very unconvinced, “and I may have ever so slightly freaked out when he told me that he liked me, and said that I needed time to get my bearings now that I was done with university or some other horrifically weak excuse.”

“Please tell me that you’re joking.”

“Does it look,” Mary asked again, “like I’m joking? Anyway, I was in the midst of summoning the courage to tell him that I’d like to give it a try, because he’s a great guy, and I really like him, as it turns out, which was also a bit of a surprise once I actually put some thought to it, because I went a good eight and a bit years of university not being all that interested in guys in general, or girls for that matter, so feelings of a romantic nature were another unpleasant surprise, there was the rather major stumbling block of I had never”, Mary lowered her voice to an implausibly manly tone, “been with a man before,” she and Cynthia giggled, “and I was a bit… I don’t know… unnecessarily freaked out about it, because best-case scenario, this thing with Evie actually goes the distance, in which case I would never have had the opportunity to have a radically ill-advised romantic encounter. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself to keep the existential dread at bay. More on that later,” she allayed, when it looked as if Cynthia were about to ask a question.

“Anyway, tonight, I ran into Henry, who is the very personage of white male privilege, and who had been sort of half-heartedly pursuing me for the length of our acquaintance, so about eight years, and who I had mistakenly thought was taking the piss. So he asks what’s up with me, I, in a fit of madness, actually explain the situation, we have a frank exchange of views, he offers to engage in impure acts, we realise that we could be rather good platonic friends, and you are more or less aware of the rest.”

“That would make for the most compelling plotline in the fic,” was Cynthia’s first response.

“Fuck directly --” Mary paused. “Actually, you’re not wrong,” she agreed. “Long story short, I had a very good time with someone who I suppose could be characterised as a bit of a bad boy, and now I just need to talk myself into the mindset of (a) that was the right decision, and (b) I have the emotional fortitude and range to contend with an actual, grown-up relationship with another human.”

“Have you not had one of those before?”

“Remember when I said that I hadn’t really been interested in romance etc.? Even if I had been, I was a _female_ in _mechanical engineering_. There wasn’t much scope for that kind of nonsense. As the saying goes, the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”

“What about Nikandros? I know I keep bringing him up, but he’s a grade A hottie, and he’s a coursemate of yours, so he’s the only relevant example I can bring to the table.”

“He’s only been around for the past three years, so he didn’t feature in my undergrad or Masters, and there’s always one socially functional, attractive guy floating around as an outlier. He isn’t indicative of the rest of the set.”

Cynthia took a moment to process the new information. “I assume that a pep talk about how wonderful and excellent you are won’t really help?”

“You assume correctly,” Mary confirmed.

“And you’re interested in pursuing a relationship with this guy? Because just because he’s interested in you, doesn’t mean that you should feel obliged to act on your crush.”

“I get that,” Mary said, “but he has this fantastic habit of rolling up his sleeves, which for some reason gets me super hot and bothered, so make of that what you will,”

“No kink shaming here,” Cynthia said. “So we’ve accepted that you like him, and he apparently has liked you for quite some time. What, then, is the problem?”

“Apart from the fact that I’m barely socially functional thanks to nine years hanging around weird engineering students, and the fact that I’ve never really done the whole relationship thing and thus have NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT I’M DOING?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

“I JUST HAD WILDLY ILL-ADVISED SEX WITH A RAKE.”

“You had an enjoyable experience exploring your sexuality in a safe and consensual manner, and were not in a relationship at the time, and as such were under not even social pressure to be faithful to someone. You have done nothing wrong, and nothing would make me happier than you owning your sexuality like the fucking _queen_ that you are. That guy was like a 15/10 and apparently good at what he does. You have won the first-time jackpot. The rest of us have to deal with some asshole, or hopeless teenager, or god forbid both. So you had some naked fun with a friend. _Good for you_. Don’t let society tell you that what you did was somehow bad. You wanted to experience something before entering into a relationship, and you made it happen. You, Mary Bennet, are a goddamn inspiration.”

Mary was taken aback. “You’re really good at pep talks,” she said after a while.

“I know,” Cynthia preened.

Mary was explaining the circumstances under which she and Crawford met when her phone buzzed. This was a surprise, considering the fact that it was close to two in the morning. On autopilot, she opened the messenger notification, and only then did she read the message. It was from Nikandros.

_I just heard that you left the industry night with Henry Crawford, and that the sexual tension was palpable. What the fuck is going on, and please tell me that you didn’t do anything stupid._

It was only then that Mary realised that the message would register as seen. She was still considering what to do when her phone rang.

“Nikandros.”

“You did something stupid, didn’t you.”

“And hello to you too.” Cynthia was trying not to laugh, which was not helping Mary.

“Don’t fuck around, Mary. What did you do? Please tell me that you didn’t do what I think you may have done.”

There was a guilty silence, before Mary opened with “Henry and I ---”

She was cut off. “FUCK MARY, WHY? I THOUGHT IT WAS A PERNICIOUS RUMOUR. I DIDN’T THINK IT WAS FUCKING TRUE. AND WHY CRAWFORD? WHY, OF ALL PEOPLE, HIM?”

“I was having a bit of an emotional crisis?”

“WHY AM I CURSED TO BE SURROUNDED BY PEOPLE WHO ARE ENTRANCED BY THE FIRST PIECE OF MORALLY PROBLEMATIC DICK TO CROSS THEIR PATH?” he lamented.

“This was hardly the first time he crossed my path,” Mary protested.

“ONE, NOT WHAT I SAID; TWO, WHY DID YOU FINALLY SUCCUMB? I THOUGHT YOU HATED HIM!”

“It turned out that a lot of that was rooted in a big misunderstanding. I think we’re pretty good friends now.”

There was a beat of silence, in which Mary knew that Nikandros was running his hands through his hair, while praying for patience. “Mary, I never thought that I would have to have this conversation with you, because I thought you were sensible, but it would appear that I need to explain the difference between good dick, which is rooted,” he broke off for a moment to chuckle at his word choice, “in respect and a healthy relationship, and bad dick, which generally looks like hate sex and is all the more tempting for the fact that it's forbidden, and invariably involves someone whose very being exemplifies privilege. Henry Crawford is, for you, very bad dick.”

“The dick was pretty great if we’re being honest. I have no complaints about the quality of the dick.” Cynthia was purple, and had a vein pulsating in her forehead, so hard was she holding in her laughter.

“What about Admiral what’s-his-face? Remember him? Tall, generically good looking, war hero, son of the gentry, adorably proprietary whenever any guy got a bit too friendly with you...”

“WAS EVERYONE BUT ME AWARE THAT HE HAS DESIGNS ON MY PERSON? HE DUMPED A NUMBER OF FEELINGS BOMBS ON ME AND APPARENTLY I WAS THE ONLY ONE SURPRISED BY THAT REVELATION,” Mary was hiss-yelling at that point.

“DID YOU NOT LISTEN TO ME ALL THOSE TIMES I REFERRED TO HIM AS YOUR BOYFRIEND? IT WAS KIND OF PAINFULLY FUCKING OBVIOUS.” Nikandros had no such qualms, not living in an apartment shared with five other girls who he didn’t want to wake up. He was actual-yelling.

“NOT TO ME IT WASN’T. I THOUGHT WE WERE JUST GOOD FRIENDS.”

“Mary, my dear, you and I are good friends. But even we don’t see each other for coffee and lengthy chats soaked in flirtation and sexual tension upwards of twice a week, nor do we end up going for walks along the Thames at three in the morning, or invite each other to balls, or get into hilarious scrapes at your sister’s wedding, or go to the opera and pretend to be dating just to fuck with the BAD DONG with whom you later decided to fraternise. Also, fucking finally. He decided to stop dropping hints and just make it supremely bloody obvious that he likes you on some deep personal level.”

“I did offer you my spare ticket,” Mary pointed out. “You could have pretended to be dating me.”

Nikandros snorted. “If I had taken anything even approaching the liberties which I am reliably informed that he took, you would have taken possession of my testicles, fashioned them into earrings, and made me wear them.” Cynthia fell off the bed, she was shaking so hard with suppressed laughter, grabbed a pillow, and started cackling into it. Most of her mirth was muffled.

“That does sound like something I would do,” Mary admitted. Cynthia, in her hilarity, pointed at her laptop. “Oh yes,” Mary said, “another thing. It appears that some first years have written some pretty graphic Real Person Fiction about the two of us.”

“Oh yeah,” said Nikandros, momentarily distracted. “I was wondering when you’d find out about that.”

“YOU KNEW?” Mary hiss-yelled for the second time that night.

“Jesus, Mary, I have a google alert set up for my name. As if you didn’t know. You’re the one who writes fic.”

“I don’t write RPF!”

“Well now I know. I’ve been low-key trying to work out who it was for weeks now.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you needed more things to freak out about on a romantic front?”

Cynthia had calmed down, and gave Mary a _look_. “Ok, rude,” she said, mainly to Cynthia. “Now are you done with the shaming?”

“NOT EVEN SLIGHTLY.”

“Too bad, babe, talk to you tomorrow, byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.”

Cynthia dragged herself up off the floor. “He seemed upset,” she commented.

“He thinks that I should have made better choices,” Mary replied.

“I know, I could hear his end of the call.”

“Honestly, having defended my actions to someone, I’m considerably more ok with what I did.”

“Oh thank god,” Cynthia said, flopping backwards, “because it’s two in the morning and now that I have details I’m so tired and want to go to sleep. If you need another pep talk, please hit me up tomorrow. I’m proud of you, but like, damn woman, get some rest.”

Mary stood, taking her mug with her. “Thanks for the tea, and the chat, and the condoms,”

“Any time,” Cynthia assured her with a lascivious grin.

“And please send me the link to that fic, because by god, I am going to find the little fuckers before the academic year is out.”

“Tomorrow,” Cynthia promised, already halfway under the covers. “Night, Mary.”

Mary switched off Cynthia’s light on the way out. She too was tired. And slightly sore, and curious as to what fun bruising was going to assert itself overnight.

There was a lot of fun bruising. Mary had an unfortunate tendency to bruise with considerable ease, and this case was no exception. Luckily, nothing was in a position which meant that it couldn’t have feasibly been picked up while playing rugby. Her neck looked suspect, but for once, Mary’s complete lack of a romantic life could be used as an excuse rather than an explanation.

Cynthia, true to her word, had furnished Mary with the URL of the DreamWidth account, as well as details of an accompanying tumblr, which contained what could be described (albeit very generously) as fan-art. After practically hyperventillating with excitement, because ‘damn that boy was busy last night’. Mary blushed furiously at that comment and made a tactical retreat.

Mary arrived at the room where she and Nikandros were to be running tutorial, ten minutes early, coffees in hand. She handed Nikandros an extra shot latte - his usual - and waited for him to make eye contact, which he was studiously avoiding. She had never before been delivered the cut direct, and the situation would be more amusing if not for the fact that this was one of her best friends, and they had bigger, fic-related things to be worrying about.

“I can’t even look at you right now,” he said with an air of intense disappointment, taking a sip of the coffee, “but thanks for the coffee. And as a bro, whose bro just got some, good for you. As your friend who wants you to be in a stable relationship with someone who is not Satan Himself made flesh, I am very disappointed in you.”

“Can we at least discuss the fact that there’s a cabal of students who are under the impression that we’re making the beast with two backs in deserted tute rooms?” Mary asked blithely.

“Why him, Mary?” Nikandros looked at her imploringly.

Mary shrugged and waved at the first student to walk in, glaring at her in suspicion the moment her back was turned, and then once she was seated and another two students were walking in, draped her arms over Nikandros’ shoulders, leaned down so that her lips were next to his ear, and whispered, “Because he was fucking hot, and he offered.”

Nikandros, who had grown up in a very large family and as such had no concept of boundaries, turned so that his face was in line with hers, and whispered back, “Are you really trying to ferret out the little shits with overt displays of inappropriate affection?”

Mary brushed a kiss over his jaw and could have sworn that she heard one of the little fuckers gasp. “Please tell me you saw who gasped,” she breathed, standing up. Nikandros just raised an eyebrow and jotted something down as Mary started writing on the whiteboard.

At the end of the day, as Mary was considering whether she wanted to go for a swim, or just lie on the floor watching trash on netflix, she received a call from her favourite sister-in-law.

“Mary, darling, what are you doing right now?”

“Nothing, Caro, how are you?”

“Oh, you know, kicking ass and slowly dying, the usual,” Caroline drawled in a put-upon manner. “Tell me, how would you like to come over and catch up? I feel we haven’t talked in ages.”

“We were at the same event literally less than a week ago.”

“Exactly, darling.”

Mary noted to herself that this invitation in no way seemed contrived and could in no possible way be seen as a thinly veiled attempt at an ambush, but also that she was veering very much onto the side of floor and netflix (and avoidance of what needed to be done), and so she should probably accept.

“Caroline,” came the booming pronouncement of Lord Tristan when Mary and Caroline had barely sat down to some tea, “the boy is moping.” Lord Tristan strode into the kitchen, saw Mary, froze, looked momentarily sheepish, recovered admirably, and said “Mary, hello, what an unexpected delight. I’m sorry, I thought that Caroline was alone.”

Mary looked from Caroline, who looked all together too innocent, to Lord Tristan, who was smiling brightly. She was unsurprised. “Bull,” she said, crossing her arms, “shit. This is clearly an ambush, so what is it that you wanted to discuss. I’m assuming it’s related to last afternoon’s little discussion between Evie and I?”

To their credit, only their smiles faltered, and even then, only infinitessimally. Lord Tristan peered into the teapot and got a teacup for himself before sitting down with them. “Look, it’s not my best subterfuge, I’ll admit, but…” he trailed off. “Do you like my brother. In a manner not platonic.”

“Yes, obviously.”

“And are you planning to tell him that?”

“Yes.”

“In the forseeable future?”

“Today was the plan.”

“Well then. Good. Excellent. Why didn’t you just tell him that yesterday?”

“With all due respect, that is entirely none of your business,” Mary pointed out, bracing her hands on the table and leaning forward in her seat. “What I will say of my delay is the fact that just surprising someone with the fact that you like them and have been biding your time for months is not only rather unfair to the receiving party, but also a serious creeper move, and beneath his dignity. Moreover, just because a person has expressed interest in me, they are in no way entitled to my time or regard.” Mary sipped her tea primly and fixed him with a reproachful look.

“This, Tristan, is why I told you to let me lead,” Caroline remarked wearily.

“She asked me!” he protested.

“She asked the room,” Caroline corrected, “and even if she had asked you, you could have deferred to your learned colleague.

As they argued, Mary pulled her phone from the back pocket of her jeans.

_Your brother just ambushed me and enquired as to my designs against you. I suppose we should talk._

His reply was almost immediate.

_Oh god. Where are you?_

_Caroline’s_

_She wanted to have a ‘catch up’_

_et tu, Carolinnaea &c _

Mary was interrupted in her messaging by Caroline asking her a question. Mary stared at her blankly until she repeated it. “How on earth did you not know that Evie was taken with you?”

Mary rolled her eyes. “I don’t know how forthcoming he was with you guys, but to me, he was perfectly gentlemanly and polite, and gave no indication whatsoever as to any other intentions.”

Tristan snorted. Caroline attempted to mask a fit of the giggles with a coughing fit. “My dear lady,” Lord Tristan drawled, “there were indications aplenty.”

Mary forebore responding. That was what everyone had been saying, and may well have been the case, but given that she herself hadn’t noticed, the end result was the same. She looked back to her phone.

_That’s….._

_...unfortunate._

_Do you require rescue?_

_No, it’s fine. I was planning to sweep out in a dramatic manner momentatrily_

_*momentatrily_

_*momentatrily_

_jesus motherfucking christ_

_*momentatrily_

_*momentaruly_

_FUCK_

_momentarily_

_kill me, please._

_Perhaps not._

_I’m on my way, and should be there in about five minutes. If I show up in some dramatic manner to ‘rescue’ you, they’ll be so delighted that they’ll forget to pry._

As Mary waited, she responded to Caroline and Lord Tristan’s enquiries with as little information as possible without just stonewalling them outright. A full eight minutes after being promised rescue, the front door banged open, and Fitzwilliam cried “Mary! I am here to save you!”

 _Play along_ read the message she received a moment later. “I am here!” she cried in response, “And most cruelly tormented!”

He hopped into view, evidently still experiencing leg troubles. “Come with me, fair maiden, that I may bear you away!”

Mary finished her tea and stood. “Caroline, Tristan, it’s been a delight,” she said drily, following Fitzwilliam out and onto the street. “Well that seemed suitably ridiculous to please them,” Mary commented as she followed Fitzwilliam in the direction of, she was willing to assume, his abode. “And thanks. I know I didn’t exactly give you a legitimate answer yesterday, and I am slightly sorry about that. We do, however, on that, have a lot to discuss.”

“I understand that,” Fitzwilliam replied. Mary looked over at him and was distracted by the lines of his arm muscles as he want along on crutches, noting particularly the fact that his sleeves were rolled up, and his forearms (she definitely had a thing) were positively rippling in the fading light of a summer evening.

When, after a time, they arrived, Fitzwilliam led her to a surprisingly large backyard with some stone benches overlooking a mossy rockery. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said, taking a seat and stowing the crutches next to him, “but the weather seemed so nice.”

“It’s lovely,” Mary said, pausing in her visual exploration of the patch of lawn overlooked by tall shrubs, the small patch of dwarf roses, and the climbing jasmine covering the fences, to sit on the other end of the bench.

“So,” Fitzwilliam began, before foundering.

“Yes.” Mary gathered her thoughts. “I’m sorry about how I left things yesterday. I was surprised, and confused, and did what I always do in difficult situations, tried to escape.” Fitzwilliam was looking out over the garden in a pointed manner, as if steeling himself for bad news. “I like you. A lot. You’re fabulously fun to spend time with, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve had a crush on you for ages. But,” Fitzwilliam’s small and slowly growing smile disappeared, “also in the spirit of full disclosure, I should give you an idea of why I acted the way I did.” Mary was fiddling with a hairband on her wrist and studiously avoiding looking anywhere else. “I was a pretty awkward child, growing up. I didn’t have any real interest in any kind of relationship until quite recently, and I don’t mean ‘it would be inconvenient right now so I’m ok with being single’, I mean ‘honestly thinking that I was aromantic because there wasn’t any other explanation’. There was the usual idiocy in my undergrad, but my actual relationship experience is pretty thin on the ground.” An understatement. “So if we decide to go for this, you need to know that I’m likely to be a bit nervous and weird about it, and there are probably going to be things I struggle with.”

Fitzwilliam placed a hand on her wrist, covering the elastic. Mary stared at his hand, not quite feeling up to eye contact. “Mary, nothing is stopping us from discussing what you want and are comfortable with. All I want is to not have to pretend that I don’t…” he was silent for long enough that Mary glanced up at him to see what was going on, her hair flopping about the place because there was a light breeze and her hair elastic was currently being held hostage. Fitzwilliam brushed her hair out of the way and left his hand there, cupping the side of her face. “Mary, I’ve been in love with you from more or less the moment we met. And I’m sorry to be dumping this on you as well, but at least everything is out in the open now. I don’t care if we need to take things slowly, or whatever you need for this to work. I… I don’t particularly care so long as I’m with you.”

Mary was saved from having to formulate a coherent answer by a sudden unforecast and unexpected downpour. Despite all deliberate haste, they were both soaked through by the time they made it inside. “That puts a bit of a damper on things,” Mary remarked as they stood there, dripping, and tried not to laugh. Fitzwilliam just gave her a look which said ‘Mary, how could you?’ Mary fought to suppress a shiver, because as balmy as the evening had been, it was no longer once the rain had begun.

Fitzwilliam snapped to. “Let me get you some dry stuff to change into, and I’ll put your clothing in the dryer. Leave your shoes there, and I’ll get you a towel.”

Mary left her shoes at the door, and removed her socks, which were also soaked, while Fitzwilliam sat on a handily placed stool and did the same. Mary followed him in and was soon presented with some towels and what looked suspiciously like a pair of pyjama pants and a henley. Fitzwilliam then showed her to a bathroom, and she dried herself as best she could, putting on the clothes she had been given. It was indeed pyjamas. Mary then had first-hand confirmation of the fact that men’s shirts weren’t designed to accommodate bosoms. The buttons tended to gape, and when they were undone to relieve the tension on the fabric, they showed a decent amount of cleavage. Mary sighed, thanked the heavens that today was a good boob day, towelled her hair, did damage control on the makeup she had been wearing (eyeliner and mascara, both waterproof, and eyebrow powder which decidedly wasn’t, but thankfully hadn’t run everywhere), and emerged, holding a bundle of her soaked clothing. Fitzwilliam had changed into jeans and a similar shirt, showed her to the laundry, and put her clothes to dry. He then handed Mary a pair of socks. “Sorry about the mismatch, I just don’t need to worry about that stuff any more.” He looked down at his foot and back up to Mary. “You know how it is.”

“Not from personal experience,” Mary commented, “but thanks nonetheless.”

Fitzwilliam ushered Mary into the sitting room and let her put on the socks before he started talking. “I’m happy to discuss logistics right now, although it should probably be mentioned that before the rain kicked off, I was very close to trying to kiss you.”

“We should probably discuss first,” Mary agreed. “I don’t even know where to begin, but…” she shrugged. “According to a number of mates, our interactions up to this point have essentially constituted what they would describe as dating, so I’m happy to keep going the way we have been.”

“And what sort of…” Fitzwilliam seemed to be struggling to articulate what he wanted to say. “What physical contact is…”

Mary laughed. “I said aromantic. Asexual never entered into it. If I’m honest, I rather enjoyed your territorial boyfriend act.”

“You did?” he said, perking up.

“Very much,” Mary confirmed, moving across so that she was right next to him. “I liked all of the times you just put an arm around me, or pushed my hair off my face when my hands were occupied, or brushed your fingertips over some bruising, asking if I was ok,” Mary broke off with a shiver as his fingertips brushed along the side of her neck.

“You look like you were stepped on by someone wearing cleats,” he commented.

“It happens,” Mary explained, which wasn’t, strictly speaking a lie.

“Are you ever not battered?” Fitzwilliam asked.

“Off-season is pretty calm,” Mary reassured him. “An preseason isn’t too bad.” She took one of his hands, running her fingers over the veins at his wrist. “You shouldn’t worry about it. I bruise easily. I’m invariably fine.”

Fitzwilliam captured her hands in his. “It’s hard not to worry about it when you have a handprint-shaped bruise and you haven’t even noticed it’s there.”

“Evie, you’re going to have to accept that I’m going to spend the majority of the time covered in fairly suspect bruising.” Mary squeezed his hands reassuringly and then tied her hair back, because it was going everywhere, before shifting so that she was facing him directly. “And if you get worried every time I present looking a little bit worse for wear, you’re going to be worried basically all of the time.” Mary adjusted her hair, and as if the universe were personally tormenting her, her hair elastic snapped. Mary groaned and flopped her head down, lamenting the passing of an elastic she had rather liked.

Fitzwilliam tilted her chin up and brushed back her hair, one thumb trailing along her cheekbone. Mary looked up at him. His eyes were roving over her in a manner which made her blush slightly. “You know,” he said, his hand resting at the back of her neck, “the sight of you, here, in my clothing, is horrifically sexy. And honestly, there’s only been one situation where I’ve been more sorely tempted to suggest all manner of impure acts.”

“After Jane and Charles’ wedding?” Mary asked, doing her best not to lean into his touch as he twined his fingers into her hair.

Fitzwilliam smiled in lieu of an answer and leaned in towards her. “You know the answer to that,” he whispered, his breath tickling her neck as his hand slid downwards to rest on her lower back. Mary allowed herself to be pulled closer to him. She could feel the warmth of his body, so close were they, and siezing the moment, she ran her hands through his hair, raising herself up onto her knees, so that they were eye to eye. Slowly she leaned forwards and pressed her lips to his. He stayed still, as if afraid that any movement might startle her off. After a very brief and very chaste hiss, she sat back down, and with a smile (and a blush), said, “Maybe I wanted you to.”

The kiss that followed, he initiated. It was neither brief nor chaste, and left Mary short of breath. He was not unmoved either. “I’ve wanted to do that for quite some time,” he admitted with a smile, leaning back down to meet her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So they're together, and everything is lovely. Is this the end of their story? Not even close. This one is going to keep going alongside _Politics and Profanity_ , and... strap in, fam.


	9. A number of evenings, wherein everything is exactly the same, and yet entirely different.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein our heroine does her best to adjust to the whole relationship thing, with mixed results.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO MY NUGGETS. IT'S BEEN TWO MONTHS SINCE THE LAST UPDATE, AND OH HOW THINGS HAVE CHANGED.   
> I have moved permanently to my nation's capital, where I am working as a civil servant, living out my Bernard Wooley fantasies (I'm not yet anywhere close to the end goal, which is being Sir Humphrey, and I'm not in an interesting enough division to be Malcolm Tucker), and there too has been much upheval in my personal life. 
> 
> Is this a valid excuse for not updating in literally two months?
> 
> No. 
> 
> Is it the excuse I'm going for? 
> 
> Clearly.

Mary defended her dissertation without incident, and her life moved right along to preparing to move out of student accommodation and into her sister’s flat. Nikandros, excellent chap that he was, was helping her with that by way of providing a car and some muscle. After a bit under an hour or so worth of carrying the assorted detritus of Mary’s life, after she closed the boot of the car, Mary leaned against the tailgate and regarded her best friend. “Hey Nik,”

“Yes?”

“When your mate said that you only dated Greek girls, how much of that was bullshit?”

“We’re not making the RPF come true, Mary.”

Mary rolled her eyes. “You’re hilarious. Seriously though.”

“None of it. Why?”

“Cool…” Mary said, ignoring his question and walking back to her building. “So what constitutes Greek enough for your purposes?”

“Ideally fully Greek, but I could probably spin half.”

“How about a quarter?”

“Which grandparent?”

“A grandmother.”

Nikandros paused in serious thought. “I could make that work. Are you planning to share whatever you’re plotting with the rest of the class?”

“Clearly not,” Mary said as she swiped them back into her building, “otherwise I wouldn’t have been so vague.” She then glanced at her watch to ensure that everything was running smoothly. It was.

When they arrived at Mary’s apartment, the door to Cynthia’s room was open, and she was perched on her bed, working on her computer. “Hey Cynth,” Mary called on her way to her room to survey what was left to be taken away - only one person’s carrying worth of items.

“Mary!” said Cynthia, emerging. “I figured you hadn’t gone yet.”

“As if I would leave without physically saying goodbye. How was class?”

Cynthia rolled her eyes. Mary snorted and looked around for Nikandros. He was loitering by the doorway. “This is not going to be my most subtle moment,” Mary began, “and for that I apologise, but also, from what I’ve learned,” slightly manic eye-contact heavy with hinting, “subtlety is bad in these occasions. So, Nik, did you know that Cynthia is one quarter greek, and would like to, and I’m quoting directly here, lick your chest. Cynth, did you know that Nikandros has been gazing at you like the forbidden fruit since basically day one?” Both of them blushed deeply. “No? Well, you’re welcome. Now, I’m going to take this load of stuff to Nik’s car, you guys take a moment to talk. You’re both coming to my new flat this evening for dinner, which gives you a nice easy prelude to your first date, wherein you will go to a bar of some nature and discuss how I am the best friend in existence, and how lucky you are to have me in your lives.” She held out her hand to Nikandros, who gave her the keys with a look of shock tinged with reproach and gratitude, and left them alone.

Once her things were in the car, Mary dialled Charlotte. 

“Mary, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?”

“Are you doing anything this evening?”

“Not really.”

“Want to come over for dinner? I’m having some friends over, and I don’t want Lizzie feeling outnumbered.”

“Sure.”

“You’re the best.”

“I know. Bye now.”

“Bye Charlotte.”

Mary re-entered her apartment to see Cynthia and Nikandros conversationally circling each other like a couple of socially awkward teenagers. She considered that a win.

Later that evening, once her worldly possessions had been unloaded into the room which had formerly belonged to Jane, the buzzer sounded, and Mary let Charlotte into the apartment. “So,” began Charlotte, sitting down at the table once introductions were complete and regarding Mary, “Mary, how are things?”

“The usual, if you ignore the fact that I’m done with my studies and have no idea what I want to do with my life and I’m essentially cast adrift in the maelstrom of adult life.”

Nikandros coughed in a manner which distinctly sounded like ‘Also she’s finally dating the boy’. Mary flicked a piece of carrot at him. He caught it in his mouth, like the annoying little shit that he tended to be.

“YOU’RE FINALLY DATING TRISTAN’S LITTLE BROTHER!” Charlotte squealed.

“It would appear that way, yes,” Mary said grimly. 

“Since when?”

“Since a couple of days ago.”

“I can’t believe Lizzie didn’t tell me!” Charlotte said, affronted.

“I’m pretty sure she just didn’t know.”

“You didn’t tell her?”

“She didn’t ask.”

Nikandros groaned loudly and in a manner which sounded suspiciously like ‘for fuck’s sake’. Mary glared at him. Cynthia snorted. Mary ignored them all and continued preparing the dinner. 

As the oven timer began to beep, Elizabeth entered the apartment. “Lizzie!” Mary called as she armed herself with heatproof accessories, “you’re just in time.”

Elizabeth sat at the empty place next to Charlotte, after hesitating slightly. “Was there a longstanding plan that I completely forgot about?” 

Mary shrugged as best she could while holding a baking dish. “Cynth and Nik helped me move my stuff, so I invited them to stay for dinner, and I didn’t want you to be outnumbered by youth, so I invited Charlotte on your behalf.” Most of that was mainly true. 

“You might have mentioned that Fitzwilliam minor finally got his shit together and spoke of feelings to Mary, and that the two of them are now officially in ‘a relationship’,” Charlotte mentioned, still evidently miffed that she had been kept out of the loop.

Elizabeth’s reaction was highly undignified, to the point where Mary paused to consider whether she engaged in an above average level of secrecy. She dismissed this notion, because in her opinion, it was not pressing information, and certainly didn’t warrant the level of excitement that both Elizabeth and Charlotte were exhibiting. 

“Huh,” Charlotte expleted. “Mary said that you probably just didn’t know, but I just didn’t believe her.”

“WHY DID YOU NOT TELL ME THIS IMMEDIATELY?” Elizabeth continued to screech.

“It didn’t seem relevant?” Mary pointed out, very much stating the obvious.

“You underestimate your sister’s level of interest in your love life, Mary,” Charlotte explained. 

“WERE YOU EVER GOING TO LET ME IN ON THAT LITTLE DETAIL??” Elizabeth seemed overwrought.

Mary shrugged again and pointed out that the past few days had been remarkably busy such that she hadn’t thought it especially pressing. When the issue was finally put to rest, Elizabeth decided to stop making a scene and started the introductions which Mary had regrettably neglected until that point. Cynthia and Nikandros had been observing the action like spectators at a tennis match until that point, and seemed slightly caught off-guard to have the conversation turning to them.

When the introductions were complete, Mary brought the baking dish to the table, and saw Elizabeth eyeing it critically. “Did you try jointing the chicken with your bare hands again?” she asked in a tone which was unnecessarily defeated. That was clearly the case, and Mary didn’t think it was that problematic. It seemed like a waste of anatomy study to not carefully cleave tendon from bone like some kind of serial killer taking trophies. She said something to that effect, and the subject was dropped until Elizabeth decided that she had nothing better to do than probe for details.

“So Mary,” she began, her tone deliberately light, “tell me more about this new thing with you and Evie? I simply must have details! The last I heard, he had bared his soul to you, and then you just blanked him.”

“Look, Lizzie, his little announcement came as quite a surprise,” it appeared that Fitzwilliam had been remarkably forthcoming about his feelings to everyone except her, and this was irksome, “and I did not have the liberty of having time to ponder his revelations at that moment.”

“I can’t imagine why it was such a surprise,” Elizabeth countered, “I kept dropping heavy hints.”

“And I told you that repeatedly without even bothering with the subtlety of hints,” Nikandros pointed yet again.

“ _ Anyway _ ,” Mary continued, ignoring the various betrayers in the room, as she finally had an opportunity to give her side of the story, “I had things I needed to do that evening, and then when I was at leisure to think on things, I had an in-depth and fruitful discussion with an old friend,” if, perhaps, a slightly redacted side of the story, “which convinced me that I should stop being timid, and go for it, given that I liked the chap.”

Nikandros looked like he was about to have a stroke, but remained silent. Unfortunately for Mary, the vibrant shade of puce he was beginning to turn caught Elizabeth’s eye. “Why do I get the feeling that there’s some definite euphemism at play?” she asked.

“I can’t possibly imagine,” Mary answered while calling Nikandros a traitor with her eyes.

“Ask her who the old friend was,” Nikandros offered, apparently trying to see how far he could push her before she stabbed him.

“Mary,” Elizabeth said brightly, “with which old friend did you discuss the issue?”

To Nikandros, “Really, Judas?” To Elizabeth, “Henry Crawford.”

“ProblematicDick McRichWhiteBoyFace?” Elizabeth lost the ability to comport herself like an adult once more. Mary drank some water and resisted the urge to strangle her sister. “I thought the two of you had more of a slightly hostile, definitely flirting thing going on,” she continued, evidently unaware of how close Mary was to physically engaging in casual murder. “Since when do you have in-depth and fruitful discussions with him?”

“Yes, Mary, since when is that part of your interactions with him?” Nikandros asked idly, before looking like he was kicked in the ankle by Cynthia. Which he probably was.

“Ok, so first of all, fuck directly off, my boy,” Mary offered, before addressing her sister and explaining that things were greatly changed between them following their chat. 

Elizabeth, however, would not be side tracked, and continued to press for details of her interactions with Fitzwilliam. Mary indulged her with ill grace. “I taught classes all day, tried to entrap the students who have been writing super smutty RPF about me and Nikandros all year, met Caroline for tea, which turned out to be a front for an interrogation from Tristan, escaped with Evie, explained why I had blanked him et cetera, and now here we are.”

“RPF?” Mary should have remembered that Elizabeth wouldn’t be able to keep up if she started throwing around fandom jargon.

“Real Person Fiction,” Charlotte explained helpfully, having had it explained to her a mere hour earlier. “Like fanfiction of real people. Mary showed me some of it. It’s real smutty.”

“I do not want to know,” Elizabeth said, stopping just short of covering her ears and talking over them. ”And I’m going to ignore the fact that you clearly left out a number of details in that explanation,” the best course of action given that Mary wasn’t talking, and Nikandros seemed to know when not to imply too hard, “but where is Evie? Now that you guys are both on the same page, I thought he’d be here as well.”

“Trade negotiations,” Mary sighed expansively. “He’s going to come by if things don’t end too late, but I’m not holding out hope. I’ll see him tomorrow.”

“Mary, my darling,” Elizabeth said, seemingly recovered from the mentions of fic, “this is not about you seeing or not seeing your boyfriend. This is about me being able to torment the two of you while you’re in the same place.”

“I just want to meet him in person,” Cynthia said with a slight hint of evil, and Nikandros agreed with her. “I’ve read the bulk of their message history,” he explained, “so I’m familiar with their dynamic, but I’ve never actually  _ met _ him.”

“And a desire to cause me torment is no part of that?” Mary asked, knowing full well what the answer to that was. With her dignity and privacy well and truly sacrificed on the altar of people who were far too invested in her personal life, the conversation turned to other topics, starting with Mary’s chosen method of rending limb from limb when preparing the flesh of an animal, and then onto the trade negotiations where the away team were firmly ahead. 

It was during this discussion that the buzzer to the flat sounded. “Expecting anyone?” Elizabeth asked, grinning like a cheshire cat. Mary, to her eternal and continued shame, blushed, and proceeded to say many very unkind things about Elizabeth’s forebears via the medium of sign, before going to buzz Fitzwilliam in (because who else was it likely to be).

“That all seemed to carry meaning,” Cynthia commented, having a rudimentary grasp of sign herself, “but other than a ‘fuck off’, I didn’t get any of it.”

“That’s probably for the best,” Charlotte said in a heavily moralistic tone, “I have no idea where Mary learned that.”

“Mary learned it from Maria, who says she learned it from you,” Mary replied in the third person with a raised eyebrow. She checked her appearance in the blacked out screen of her phone, caught herself doing just that, called herself several kinds of stupid, and set to helping everyone clear the table so that she could make tea.

She had added leaves to the teapot’s infuser, and was waiting for the kettle to finish boiling when a knock came at the door. Everyone looked very pointedly at Mary, and Elizabeth went as far as to turn her chair fully so that she was able to sit facing the door, legs crossed at the knee, looking prim and judgemental. Mary trudged to the door under their scrutiny, shaking her head slightly, and opened the door.

It was, of course, Fitzwilliam, and Mary could feel herself smiling unconsciously as he leaned down to meet her.

“He’s taller than I expected,” Cynthia stage whispered. Nikandros sniggered in response. Fitzwilliam noticed then that they had an audience, and straightened. Mary, entirely done with their nonsense, kissed him on the cheek, then took his hand and led him inside. Elizabeth glanced at her phone, and then at Charlotte, who raised her eyebrows infinitessimally. Mary decided she didn’t want to know.

Mary started introducing those in attendance who were not already acquainted. “Evie! So nice of you to join us,” Elizabeth enthused in a manner which did not bode well. Mary offered a number of non-verbal suggestions as to what Elizabeth might enjoy doing when she was next free, until Fitzwilliam caught sight of her hand movements (although it seemed not their meaning, which was a small mercy), and covered one of her hands with his, so that Mary was not able to finish describing exactly what Elizabeth could do with a lengthy pole.

At this action, all conversation at the table ceased conspicuously. Mary looked from one face to another - Charlotte and Elizabeth following with avid interest, Nikandros looking smug, Cynthia looking like she was about to pass out from excitement - and had to physically force down the urge to yell at them. Instead she asked, in a tone of heavy exasperation, “Is there a reason you’re all being so weird? You were all exceedingly clear about the fact that this wasn’t a surprise to any of you.” When she received no answer, Mary offered that Fitzwilliam should take a seat, and went back to readying the tea. 

Eventually Elizabeth offered her two cents, along with a heavy threat that she would mention it to their mother. Mary put her hands on her hips. “Mama is not to be told. I have spent years convincing her that I am lost to spinsterhood, and I am not about to have those years wasted. Sorry Evie,” she said, turning to Fitzwilliam, “but I’d love it if we could actively neglect to inform my parents of this for as long as humanly possible.” 

“Come now, what’s that look?” Elizabeth asked, prompting Mary to scan the assembled faces to see who was making a look. She caught the end of a flash of momentary discomfort on Fitzwilliam’s part, and glared at Elizabeth. 

“Don’t answer that,” Mary suggested, continuing to glare at Elizabeth. The kettle finished boiling, and she put tea to steep while she retrieved a number of mismatched mugs from a cabinet, her own teawares not yet unpacked. Once tea was apportioned and cake sliced, Mary rolled her desk chair in from the sitting room where it had been left, and arranged it next to Fitzwilliam, before taking her mug of tea and sipping it in the most hostile manner of which she was capable.

“How goes spin?” Fitzwilliam asked of Elizabeth in what smacked of being an attempt to change the subject.

“Remarkably easy, given the pasting I can only imagine we’re currently receiving. How go the negotiations?”

“Bloody horrific, even by post-Brexit trade deal standards.” There was a communal wince at Fitzwilliam’s analysis. “There might be a few fires to put out tomorrow - the bad weather means no shirtless morning jogs by those two staffers, which means the media might actually deign to take a look at the current state of the negotiations.” 

Elizabeth groaned. “They couldn’t have just braved the mild sleet?”

Fitzwilliam shrugged. “If you ask me, it’s terribly unsporting to come here for trade negotiations, and then distract everyone with some hot men so that they can just thrash us with tarriffs.”

“It’s not very Cricket?” Nikandros suggested with a barely concealed grin. 

“It’s not,” agreed Fitzwilliam, not quite seeming to notice that Nikandros was taking the piss.

Eventually Cynthia and Nikandros made their exit, for they had a date to go on, and Mary walked them to the door, with the intent of extracting many a promise of details once the evening was over. Instead, she had Cynthia whisper-squealing about how cute she and Fitzwilliam looked, and how one of his hands kept finding its way to Mary and she kept smiling when it did, et cetera, until Nikandros finally made good and hustled her out the door. He then paused and whispered “The two of you do look super sweet together. I’m honestly glad you sorted through your bullshit, even if I don’t approve of your methods.”

“One more word and I will actually end your life,” Mary whispered back with no hint of jest. Nikandros took the hint and he and Cynthia departed.

Soon afterwards, Mary and Fitzwilliam decamped to the sofa, where Mary browsed job openings for which she was wildly overqualified (although technically, graduate programs didn’t care what level of degree you had just graduated from, only that that degree was recent). Fitzwilliam offered the odd opinion from time to time, but seemed content to play with her hair as she leant against him. Eventually Charlotte departed, and Elizabeth absented herself from the room.

Fitzwilliam reached around Mary, who had flopped her head back and was groaning, and laid hands on her keyboard. “Hibernate it,” Mary said, mid-groan.

“I’m trying, my love, but you’re blocking my view of the screen.”

Mary pulled her head back upright, sighed pitifully, and hibernated her computer. She then closed the lid, carefully placed it on the nearby coffee table, and rearranged herself so that she was lying on the sofa, her legs dangling off the arm of the sofa, her head resting on Fitzwilliam’s thigh above where his prosthetic started. “So before, that guilty look when Elizabeth threatened to tell my mother about us. What was all that about?”

Fitzwilliam, who had been entwining Mary’s fingers in his, stilled and looked exceedingly guilty. “It’s a number of things, most of which aren’t directly my fault.”

“I’ll believe that once you’re done explaining yourself, sir.”

“Well, first off, are you free for the weekend three weeks hence, from ideally tuesday, but failing all else, friday?”

“I’m free basically all the time, because that’ll be the tail end of exam time, and invigilating won’t be that thick on the ground. Dare I ask why?”

“One of the lads from my old division is getting married up in Scotland, and I’d like it if you were to come as my date.”

“What’s the dress code?”

“You could definitely get away with black tie.”

“Oh fantastic!” Mary smiled. “And you’ll be in a kilt?” 

“I will.”

“So that’s that sorted. What else did you want to get off your chest?”

“Well this wedding is happening relatively close - and this is by highland standards, so a good forty minute drive - to the ancestral home of my mother’s clan, and so we would be staying there. Which means that she would necessarily find out.”

Mary laughed. “I don’t care if your mother finds out. My only concern is keeping this news from  _ my _ mother.”

“Oh thank the lord,” Fitzwilliam breathed, “because Tristan told her what I’m hoping is an abridged version and I received a very stern call from her asking when I was planning to introduce you to her.”

Mary gave Fitzwilliam a very disappointed look which soon morphed, unbidden, into a smile at how contrite he looked. “You’re hilarious,” she commented, taking one of his hands and pressing a kiss to it. 

Fitzwilliam leaned down and pressed a kiss to Mary’s lips. “Caro’s hosting brunch this sunday, and if I don’t bring you along, it will be much remarked upon.”

“Oh will it now?”

“You know Caroline and Tristan. They’re horrific. But Jane and Charles will be there, so at least it won’t be an entirely hostile audience.”

“And what if I already have plans?” Mary asked impishly.

“Do you have other plans?”

“Well, no.”

“So it doesn’t matter, does it,” Fitzwilliam said brightly, before yawning, which prompted Mary to yawn and then look at her watch. 

“Christ on a unicycle, it’s past midnight,” she commented, sitting upright and rotating her body so that her legs touched the floor again.

“I should probably head off,” Fitzwilliam offered, standing.

“You can… if you want…” Mary, it seemed, had suddenly lost the capacity to use key words in speech.

“My darling, the fact that you can’t articulate what you’re trying to offer tells me that it’s not the right time for that,” he said, sitting back down next to Mary and pulling her towards him as her body caught up with her mouth and she blushed ferociously. Fitzwilliam then kissed her on the forehead and stood, Mary standing with him. “I’ll see you on Sunday,” he said, as she walked him to the door, kissing her before he left. Mary stared at the door after he had gone, smiling dopily, for a while, before yawning again and getting ready for bed.

Saturday passed uneventfully, for all Mary was doing was unpacking. Until relatively late that evening when Mary received a call from Elizabeth.

“Lizzie.”

“Mary. I need you to evacuate the apartment.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m about to have casual sex with a hot foreign aide, and since I don’t particularly want to have myself recorded as an overnight visitor to the New Zealand embassy, where he is staying, I’m going to need you to be not in the apartment.”

Mary took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of her nose. “How long do I have to vacate?”

“Maybe forty-five minutes?”

Mary rolled her eyes at her phone. “Fine. But I’m not impressed. Less than an hour is hardly a sporting head start.”

“Yes, yes, I know, apologies et cetera.”

“Sorry not sorry?” Mary suggested.

“Pretty much. Thanks Mary. Bye.”

Mary glared at her phone for a while after Elizabeth ended the call and then selected a number from her speed dial.

“Mary.”

“Nik, how are you?”

“Getting progressively more suspicious the longer you sound super chirpy. What’s going on?”

Mary snorted. He knew her and her phone manner well. “Lizzie’s sexiling me. Any chance I could crash at yours tonight?”

There was a pause on the other end. A suspiciously long one. “Well, well, well. What a situation we find you in,” Nikandros began. “Now, I could easily tell you that of course you can crash here, there’s a perfectly good sofa which you have frequented before. But of course, that wouldn’t be as fun as telling you that you’re an adult, in what you claim is a grown-up relationship, and how hilarious it will be for me to imagine you calling up your boyfriend and inviting yourself over to stay the night. Sooooo… sucks to be you, my dude, have fun.”

“Dick!” Mary breathed in wonderment, before considering her options. She could, of course call Caroline, if the need arose, and she knew that her room at university was as yet unoccupied, so she could get Cynthia to swipe her in, but Nikandros had a point. So she steeled herself, and called Fitzwilliam.

“Mary, is everything alright?” It was, admittedly, rather late for a social call.

“Yes and no,” Mary replied. “Lizzie just let me know that she needs me out of the apartment in a bit over half an hour, and I was wondering if I could crash at yours for the evening. I know that it’s totally unexpected, and I’m sorry about--”

“Of course you can. I’ll set up a guest room.”

“Oh there’s no need to--”

“Mary,” he said, voice firm, and pitch tracking slightly lower, “I insist.”

“Thanks,” Mary said, because she was dealing with a bit of a hot flush, and that was the only response really available to her. 

“That’s settled then. I’ll see you soon.”

“See you.” Mary ended the call and let her breath out in a whoosh. She then took charge of herself, ordered an uber, and packed a bag with whatever necessities she could see herself needing and which she had already unpacked. There were a number of gaps, but that could not be helped. She was substituting a baggy, comically oversized old t-shirt for actual pyjamas, but that was a price she was just going to have to pay. 

She arrived at Fitzwilliam’s abode, heart pounding for reasons she couldn’t quite fathom. She had barely knocked on the door when it was opened by Lord Tristan, clad in a silk banyan. It was not the tableau Mary had been expecting, and yet was in no way even remotely a surprise. “Tristan,” she said, nodding a greeting and trying to look as put together as could be, considering that she was wearing the ratty old jeans and machine grease-stained shirt she had been unpacking in.

“Mary, you look a treat,” Lord Tristan drawled, stepping aside to let her in. “This is an unexpected delight.”

Fitzwilliam appeared momentarily later, much to Mary’s relief, for at his appearance, Lord Tristan disappeared like some kind of apparition. “Sorry about that,” Fitzwilliam said once Mary had finished removing her shoes. “He must have been loitering at the doorway waiting for you to appear so that he could be as UNNECESSARILY OBNOXIOUS AS HE POSSIBLY COULD,” he raised his voice in the direction of the darkened area at the top of the stairs.

“WHAT ELSE DID YOU EXPECT, EVIE, I’M GOING TO MAKE BOTH YOU AND YOUR GIRLFRIEND FEEL AS AWKWARD AS POSSIBLE,” Tristan responded. 

Fitzwilliam rolled his eyes. “The guest rooms are upstairs. I’ll take you up.”

“Thanks for letting me stay.” 

“Come on,” Fitzwilliam rested his crutches at the bottom of the stairs, and with the aid of the banisters, hopped his way up. Mary followed, after a glance or two back at his crutches, before she saw that there was another pair waiting at the top of the stairs. Fitzwilliam led the way to a room which he opened, and then stepped out of the way, letting Mary enter. “Bathroom is at the end of the hallway, there’s towels in the closet. Let me know if you need anything,” he said, making as if to leave. 

Mary stepped out of the room and caught his arm, ducking around him so that she was blocking his retreat. She placed a hand on his shoulder. “Really, Evie, the fact that you’re so… ok with everything. It’s really helpful.” 

Fitzwilliam adjusted his crutches so that he could wrap an arm around Mary’s waist, pulling her towards him and kissing her neck to much mortified giggling. “Good night, Mary,” he said, releasing her and returning downstairs, switching off the light as he went. 

Mary plugged in her phone, sent a very strongly worded text message to Nikandros, and did her best to fall asleep while being stunned by the absurdity of her life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For constant updates on the Hot Mess Express that is my life, the odd excerpt, or just to stroke by fragile ego by way of the ask box, hit me up on tumblr.


	10. A sunday afternoon of leisure and light conversation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some fluff to soothe your souls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not dead, and the fics aren't on hiatus. I am working on them, even if I generally have approximately shit all to show for it.
> 
> But hey, an update :)

The weather had been uncommonly good, and so Mary, against most of her better judgement, had caved to her gentleman-caller’s (the word boyfriend made her viscerally uncomfortable) pleas to go outside and photosynthesise (she didn’t bother pointing out how incorrect he was), albeit after considerable application of prophylaxis.

A couple of hours later, as she felt the first pricks of potential overexposure to the sun, Mary shifted and felt around for her glasses. Fitzwilliam had taken them off her because ‘there's no point magnifying the sun if your eyes are shut’. He had been feathering light kisses along her jaw as he had, so she hadn’t bothered pointing out that that wasn’t how refraction worked, and that everything he was saying was bullshit. Mary wasn’t quite sure whether he was joking when he said things like this, what with him usually seeming relatively intelligent, but she didn’t feel like confirming just in case the tertiary study of pure mathematics had brought with it the usual absolute disconnection from reality.

“What are you doing?” he asked from where he lay, as Mary cursed herself for choosing trendy clear frames which, when combined with the glare from the sun, made them almost impossible to find.

“I’m trying to find my glasses, because I’ve been out in the sun too long, and am also very blind.”

Fitzwilliam sat upright (probably - Mary couldn’t really tell) and put his hands on her shoulders, stilling her, before placing her glasses in the hand closest to him. Mary put them on and elbowed him. “Apologies,” he said, putting an arm around her shoulders.

“I probably should have mentioned earlier that my eyesight is super bad, to the extent that I am, technically speaking, blind without them. My depth perception also starts getting questionable in low light situations, which you might have noticed at,” Mary had looked over at him, intending to call back to her sister’s wedding when she had partially stranded herself in a maze, when she saw him in detail. His shirt was unbuttoned to make full use of the summer sun, and Mary saw for the first time what looked like serious and extensive shrapnel scarring. “Christ on a fucking bicycle,” she commented.

“Mary?” he asked uncertainly, before tracking her gaze and pulling the front of his shirt closed. He looked oddly uncomfortable. 

“Oh no you don’t,” Mary admonished, scooting towards him and tugging his shirt back open. “When the fuck did this happen?” Fitzwilliam fixed Mary with an exceedingly camp look. Given that he lived with his brother, that was unsurprising. He had undoubtedly learned from one of the best. Mary, on reflection, had to admit that that had been a stupid question to ask. “So this is from…” Mary attempted engaging in the great British habit of miming instead of saying uncomfortable things, and stopped almost immediately, because miming explosions probably wasn’t helping matters.

“It was pretty unlikely that the damage was localised to one leg,” Fitzwilliam pointed out in an almost exasperated manner.

“And objectively I recognise that,” Mary agreed, “I am nonetheless surprised by the extent of it, which, again, objectively I shouldn’t be, but yet, that is the fact of it. That is some serious shit.”

“You’ve seen the remaining leg,” he pointed out, “and my arms are hardly untouched. Your surprise surprises me.”

“Well that would probably be something to do with the fact that you only ever phrase it like some unfortunate escapade which led to a couple of undesirable side effects. And I’m probably slightly guilty of the old machining habit of assuming that any scarring below the elbow is the result of some mild industrial accident.”

Fitzwilliam fixed her with another exceedingly camp look. This one said ‘when in my life might I have been in a machining environment?’ Then he sighed and ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face. “I tend to try to avoid talking about it. It was hardly a good time for me. What was meant to be just another day of clearing up after the American campaign to win hearts and minds ended with one of my men dead, and me close to it.”

“What happened?” Mary asked, before considering the intrusion, and continuing, “assuming it’s not…”

“You do get to ask things, Mary,” Fitzwilliam pointed out, leaning back on one arm. “There was some unexploded ordinance, and the bomb robot we sent in didn’t find anything conclusive, so we assumed it was just a dud like all the others which showed nothing when the robot went in. Only it wasn’t a dud, and things went from there.”

“You weren’t in bomb suits?” Mary asked.

Fitzwilliam snorted. “Bomb suits were the number one cause of dehydration and heat exhaustion, they massively impaired fine motor work, which is a large part of bomb disposal as it turns out, and didn’t even protect against the shockwave which is the biggest killer when a bomb goes off. Literally all they do is protect against close range shrapnel, so while we’d wear them for landmines and the like, the rest of the time we just wore some Kevlar and hoped for the best.”

“Those statements weren’t related I hope.” Mary had studied composites enough to know that Kevlar was pretty good at stopping bullets, but was absolutely useless at stopping sharp projectiles.

“They were not. The kevlar was to protect us from the people whose hearts and minds had already been won. The hoping for the best was for the fact that if some unexploded ordinance did explode, our chances of survival were very low.”

“And when ‘things went from there’?”

“I spent weeks in hospital, had a significant amount of foreign material stuck in my leg so that I’d have something to use a prosthetic with, and then had months of rehab before I was able to do things again.”

“They did a very tidy job,” Mary commented, scrutinising his chest. “Did you get much adhesion with the scarring?”

“Some, on the ones which were harder for me to reach and work on.” Fitzwilliam seemed slightly concerned by how unfazed Mary seemed to be. “Are you sure that none of your degrees were in medicine? Because you’re showing the sort of clinical interest and morbid curiosity that I usually only get from health professionals.”

“Biomed was health-adjacent,” Mary answered, before fixing Fitzwilliam with a bit of a glare. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around the fact that if I present with even one slightly suspect looking bruise, you freak out. I cannot fathom how you didn’t develop some sense of proportion or perspective in all this.”

“I worry about you.”

“Jesus, Evie, how fragile do you think I am? If you’re allowed to shrug off a near-death incident, I get to shrug vaguely at a few bruises, surely.”

“And when I worry about my girlfriend getting injured, I am under no obligation to exercise any kind of proportionality,” Fitzwilliam countered. 

Mary, meanwhile, cringed. “Can you never refer to me as your girlfriend ever again?” she asked, hurriedly continuing, when she saw the sudden flash of hurt on Fitzwilliam's face, “it sounds unnecessarily juvenile.”

“I could refer to you as my fiance,” Fitzwilliam suggested.

“Funny,” Mary commented, suddenly reminded of the prickling feeling of nascent sunburn. “I need to go indoors,” she announced, getting up and going where there was no direct sunlight. She was waiting for her eyes to adjust to the lower light when Fitzwilliam wrapped his arms around her waist, and kissed her lightly, before drawing back, with her glasses. Mary crossed her arms and glared in his general direction. “Fucking seriously, Evie?” 

Fitzwilliam snorted, and put her glasses back in her hand. Mary put them on to see Fitzwilliam pinching the bridge of his nose. “You were not joking about being practically blind,” he commented.

“It’s not the sort of thing one jokes about.” Mary glared at him more pointedly. “Although given recent topics of conversation, I suppose that isn’t necessarily true.”

“Fair,” he conceded, stepping back towards her and returning his hands to her waist. “So why the sudden rush to get indoors?”

“I stayed out too long, and can feel the sunburn coming in.”

Fitzwilliam looked incredulous. “You spent a significant period of time smearing yourself with some very strong sunscreen and wouldn’t let me near you for half an hour lest I touch you and ruin your coverage.”

“And that is what  _ allowed _ me to spend a couple of hours just sitting in the sun with you. There’s still only so much that sunscreen can achieve.” Fitzwilliam raised his eyebrows in clear disbelief. Mary rolled her eyes. “You never wondered why I have luminously pale skin which seems to bruise at the slightest touch? It’s because I do not tan. I burn. I have learned to work within this, and just cover myself with sunscreen if I’m going to be outside for any lengthy period. Why do you think I’m always in jeans and am absolutely never in singlets no matter the weather? It’s because it’s not worth the risk of missing a patch.”

Fitzwilliam tilted her chin up, kissing  her slowly and deliberately. Then he kissed her on the forehead and physically shuddered. “How much sunscreen did you actually put on?” he asked.

“More than you’d believe,” Mary said, rising up on her toes and managing to kiss him on the neck, before slapping him on the behind. “And I’m not washing it off, because I am not in the mood to be distracted by your amorous advances. Not when this is the first time I’ve actually seen you without a shirt, and it appears that you have very much been holding out on me. I have plans to spend some time exploring this new territory.”

“I’m sure I could manage a distraction,” Fitzwilliam threatened, looking pointedly down at the view afforded by his height, combined with the fact that Mary’s t-shirt had a scoop neck. Mary glanced down to confirm that everything was in order and swore. “What is it?” Fitzwilliam asked.

Mary stepped away from his embrace and into a patch of sunlight, pulling the neckline of her shirt away from her body and examining the exposed skin. “Not only did I stay out longer than the time the sunscreen afforded me, I missed a spot.”

“I can’t see any difference in colour,” Fitzwilliam remarked.

Mary pointed out a few slivers of already pinked skin on the tops of her breasts before she noticed Fitzwilliam’s grin and swatted him. “For shame, sir!” she admonished. “That you would take advantage of a lady in such a manner. I am horrified.”

Fitzwilliam caught her arms and pressed her against a nearby wall, one hand skimming along the skin at the neckline of her shirt. “I’d be happy to kiss it better,” he offered wickedly, only to find himself swatted again.

“Enough with the amorous advances,” Mary laughed. Fitzwilliam steered her towards the nearest suitably raised surface, which happened to be one of the benches in the kitchen. Mary obligingly hopped up onto it when he backed her against it, and entwined her fingers in his hair.

“This is why I’m going grey,” commented Lord Tristan in a defeated manner. They had neither of them heard him come in, but when they sprang apart, there he was, with Caroline (smirking mightily) in tow, both of them laden with produce, having clearly visited some market or another. “Honestly,” Lord Tristan continued, resigned, “right in front of my salad.”

Mary went bright crimson and slid off the benchtop to the ground, only to find that she was pressed quite indecently against Fitzwilliam, who had not seen the need to give her room to escape. “Oh god,” she muttered, horrified, and shoved Fitzwilliam with her hip to get him out of the way so that she could turn and face the newcomers. “Hi Tristan, hi Caroline,” she said, well aware that she was still very red, while Fitzwilliam retrieved his shirt from the floor where it had along the way been discarded, and put it back on.

“Mary, it is,” Lord Tristan fixed his younger brother with a pointed look which was hard to read, “as ever a delight.” Caroline just smirked more broadly.

Fitzwilliam brushed Mary’s hair to the side, whispering in the exposed ear, “Shall we perhaps relocate?” as he traced a finger down the back of her neck. Any redness which had dissipated from Mary’s countenance returned immediately.

“Mary, could we have a quick word?” Lord Tristan asked blithely. “Caroline, do feel free to torment Evie in my absence.”

Fitzwilliam’s hand had made it to the small of her back, and the warmth of his skin was palpable through the fabric. “Tris, she is clearly paralysed with embarrassment to the point that I don’t think you’ll be getting any especially coherent conversation out of her.”

Mary turned to give him a withering look, but simply blushed deeper when she met his eyes, which were telegraphing all sorts of filthy promises. “We’ll muddle along,” Lord Tristan assured him as he walked for the room, beckoning for Mary to follow.

Fitzwilliam caught Mary’s hand as she went, looking at her with concern. “I’ll be fine,” she assured him, squeezing his hand before following Lord Tristan into the sitting room, where she arranged herself in an armchair as if it were a throne, and crossing her arms defensively.

“This isn’t another ambush, so you can relax,” Lord Tristan said, taking a seat opposite her. “This is just me making Evie suffer slightly. I’m sure he’s thinking up all sorts of horrific scenarios in his worrying little head. He really ought to make any attempt at subtlety.”

“You’re not wrong,” Mary commented. “I hate to use the word performative, because I’m relatively sure it isn’t, but equally,” she shrugged and let the implication hang.

Lord Tristan laughed, in the sort of bright and ringing tone which spoke to a wasted youth in either a theatre or a concert hall. “Mary, my  _ darling _ , you cannot seriously be harbouring doubts as to the sincerity of my brother’s affections.”

“I wouldn’t have phrased it in exactly that manner,” Mary grumbled.

Lord Tristan leaned forward and patted her arm. “Trust me. He’s serious. It’s just that at times he’s unbelievably gauche, and all of those times seem to be when he’s in close proximity to you.”

“Comforting.”

A shrug. “What can I say. Apparently his time in the military rather shifted his perceptions of what is and isn’t socially acceptable.” A look into the middle distance. “That or he’s just messing with us and our stolid ideals.”

Mary rolled her eyes. “I assume we’ve tortured him long enough?”

“Probably,” Lord Tristan admitted, “although I am slightly disappointed that you allowed yourself to be caught in such a compromising position.”

“I hardly knew that you were going to be coming home at any point that afternoon.”

Mary found herself on the receiving end of another incredibly camp look. She stood, nodded her farewell and exited the room, retrieving Fitzwilliam from where he and Caroline were whispering about something, and shut them in his room, where she slumped against the door and covered her face with her hands, giggling helplessly.

“Do I want to know?” Fitzwilliam asked with some foreboding.

Mary patted his cheek, which had the slight roughness of not having been shaved all weekend. “Probably not, trust me.”

Fitzwilliam smiled and leaned down, pressing a kiss to her hair. “I’m sorry to say that Caroline was just trying to find out if I had thoroughly ravished you yet.”

“I hope you told her yes, and with uncomfortably specific detail,” Mary said, sliding her hand down to the front of his shirt, undoing the first button.

“Of course,” Fitzwilliam answered, his voice a barely audible rumble, “otherwise they’d never leave us alone.” He traced a finger up and down her sternum as he spoke. “Would you like to hear the supposed details?” he asked.

Mary studiously did not meet his eyes and instead continued unbuttoning his shirt. “I certainly would, but not right now. I’d hate to be distracted,” she explained, sliding her hands under his shirt and pushing it off his shoulders, before staring at his exposed chest and raising her eyebrows in appraisal. She ran a finger across one of the scars, feeling the texture of the skin. “Stitches or glue?” she asked. Fitzwilliam looked surprised by her question. “How,” Mary wondered aloud, “are you perpetually surprised by my reactions? I’m hoping you weren’t expecting sentimentality.”

“I know better than to expect sentimentality. I’m just having trouble reconciling the level of clinical fascination I usually only get from medical professionals with the woman who just took my shirt off and seems to be trying to work out if I’m ticklish, and could you not?” He squirmed slightly, which was all the answer Mary needed. As a precaution, he took hold of Mary’s hands, removing them from potential tickling positions.

“Do you really think that that’s going to stop me from trying to tickle you now that I know your weakness?” Mary asked.

“Not particularly,” Fitzwilliam said, taking a step out of reach before letting go of Mary’s hands and slowly bending to retrieve his shirt, keeping his eyes on Mary the entire time, as one might a potential gunman, “but it’ll slow you down slightly,” he finished, buttoning his shirt again.

Mary snorted. “I love you,” she commented.

“I know,” Fitzwilliam replied, managing to keep a straight face until Mary broke and swatted at him, grinning like an idiot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hit me up on tumblr, babes.


End file.
